


A month Is A Long Time

by ljunattainable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 30 Day OTP Challenge, Anal Sex, Castiel & Sam Winchester Friendship, DeanCas - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Good Brother Sam Winchester, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, New Relationship, Protective Dean Winchester, Schmoop, Swearing, guest appearances by Bobby & Jo & Ellen, possible lack of continuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:57:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 44,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljunattainable/pseuds/ljunattainable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A TFW fic, set with a nod to the characters and circumstances in S5.<br/>This is a story about Dean & Cas falling in love while Dean, Cas & Sam are hunting a manticore in Utah.  <br/>It's a 30 OTP prompt fic with a plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Holding Hands

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over roughly six weeks as I didn't quite manage to post one fic a day. The fics follow on from each other pretty much but because some of the prompts were harder than others there may be a few continuity oddities. Don't shoot me. Thanks to everyone who followed through this with me and commented and left kudos and encouraged me to keep going. I couldn't have done it without you.
> 
> This is a 30 days, 30 prompts fic.
> 
> I stole this idea from plantainleaf who stole it from riseofthefallenone. 
> 
> Here are the prompts:  
> Holding hands, Cuddling somewhere, Gaming/watching a movie, On a date, Kissing, Wearing each others’ clothes, Cosplaying, Shopping, Hanging out with friends, Hurt/Comfort, Making out, Eating icecream, In a different clothing style, During their morning ritual(s), Spooning, Doing something together, In formal wear, Dancing, Cooking/baking, In battle side-by-side, Bathing together, Gazing into each others’ eyes, Arguing, Making up afterwards, Sick, Getting married, On one of their birthdays, Doing something ridiculous, Doing something sweet, Doing something hot

“Keep still!” Dean grumbles, holding Cas’s hand nestled in the palm of his own, swabbing at Cas’s bloody palm while Cas fidgets like a five-year-old.

“This is ridiculous,” Cas says, his this-is-ridiculous face seriously undermined by the wincing, and his occasional huff of displeasure.

“And don’t huff at me like that - kids huff.” Dean flicks his eyes up briefly to glare so that Cas knows he’s serious.

“I did not huff,” Castiel says. He pouts instead.

Sam sniggers.

“Shut it, Sam. Cas is bad enough, I don’t need you joining in too.”

“I don’t want a bandage. Can I have my hand back?”

“No. Keep still. It needs a bandage.” The manticore (a manticore, for God’s sake! What the hell was a manticore doing in Utah?) had shot a poison dart from its tail at Dean that Cas had stopped with his hand, and for some reason Cas can’t heal it and that is pissing him off. 

The fact that Cas doesn’t know why he can’t heal it seems to be the main cause of his displeasure, rather than the injury itself, but the injury is the main cause of Dean’s displeasure given the current state of the back seat of the Impala. He scowls at the memory. Surely the damn angel could have flown to the motel rather than messing up his car. He doesn’t say it. The dude saved his life - again - he really shouldn’t complain.

“It’s nearly stopped bleeding.” Cas says, blatantly ignoring the fact that his hand pools blood in his palm every time Dean stops swabbing.

Dean stops swabbing to prove his point. Blood pools in Cas’s palm. Dean holds Cas’s hand tighter to stop him pulling it away, and he goes back to swabbing before putting on a thick wad of dressing and using both of his hands to sandwich Cas’s hand and the dressing between his own. 

Cas winces. “It will heal.”

“When?”

“A few days.”

“A few days is human healing time. It needs a bandage.”

“Then at least please stop squeezing. It hurts.”

“It hurts?” Dean looks up, eyes wide, suddenly contrite. “Really?” 

Cas never - like never - admits out loud that he hurts.

“Really,” Cas says, looking away and down at his shoes.

“I’m sorry, dude.”

Sam looks aghast. “That’s it? That’s all it takes? Castiel says,‘It hurts’, and you turn into… into… oh, I dunno - Florence Nightingale? Damn I wish I’d learned that trick about twenty years ago.”

“Sam, I already told you to shut up once. Don’t make me tell you again.”

“Dean?” Cas questions.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?” Cas is looking at their hands and Dean follows his eyes to watch his own fingers, with a mind of their own, stroking gently across the pads of Cas’s fingertips peeking out from under all the gauze.

Dean flusters and stops.

“Don’t stop - it helps,” Cas says, looking up to stare at Dean. So Dean starts up again, even though he feels extraordinarily embarrassed, and he’s fairly sure his face has gone an unflattering shade of pink. At least, Dean tries to justify it, Cas is now sitting still and has stopped complaining about the bandage.

Sam clears his throat and smothers another snigger.


	2. Cuddling Somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let’s be clear about one thing - this is not cuddling; this is sharing body warmth.

Cas is still here. He’s not admitting to much but the manticore has obviously knocked him for six, and the poison he got hit with is having some unpleasant residual effects. The creature’s still out there, but they’re not going to do anything about it tonight, because if Dean and Sam go, they won’t be able to stop Cas going with them, and Cas is in no condition to be fighting lions with human faces and scorpion tails shooting poison darts that make a mockery of an angel’s grace.

So they’re all still here, and Cas is lying on the far edge of Dean’s bed, straight as a board, eyes closed, hands on his abdomen, injured one on top of the okay one, like he’s laid out after death. 

He’s not actually dead. Dean’s checked. He’s been looking across the meter gulf of bed that separates them fairly regularly, checking for the slight rise and fall of Cas’s chest, and Dean’s hand may have strayed once or twice to feel for the puffs of warm air escaping in wisps through Cas’s slightly parted lips.

It was Sam’s idea that Cas spend the night in Dean’s bed, but Dean had agreed, with only a token resistance. It made sense; Dean’s got the king, and Sam’s got the queen, and there’s no way Dean’s going to subject Cas to sharing a queen-sized bed with his gigantor brother and his flailing limbs. Cas, of course, hadn’t wanted to share a bed with anyone, had been quite prepared to spend the night in one of the room’s two small hard chairs, but he’d been overridden; in matters of Cas’s health, Cas doesn’t actually get a say.

Sam is asleep now, making those little snuffling noises he makes sometimes when he’s lying on his front, his face squished into the pillow. Dean has no idea if Cas is asleep or not; the guy hasn’t moved or made a sound for three hours. 

He wonders if Cas would mind if he reached over and held his hand again.

“Cas?” Dean whispers across the bed.

“What?” comes the reply. Not asleep then; that’s good. “Why did you wake me?” Whoops. 

“Sorry. I just wanted to check you were okay, y’know, before I go to sleep.”

Cas opens his eyes and turns to look at him. “I feel unwell,” he says, before turning his head back so it’s re-aligned with the rest of him and closing his eyes again.

This is the first Dean’s heard of Cas feeling ‘unwell’. 

“Are you hot? Do you have a fever?” Dean asks, drawing his brow together into little furrows of concern. 

“No. I’m cold.”

“Yeah? Let me check,” says Dean moving an arm to stretch across the bed and lay the back of his hand against the side of Cas’s face. “I dunno, you feel kinda warm to me.”

“I’m cold,” Cas says again, this time with irritation. “I think I know how my own body feels.”

Dean takes a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder at his sleeping brother. “Well, I guess, I could kinda sleep closer, and y’know, share body warmth. Not too close, obviously, just, y’know, so you can feel it. A bit. My warmth.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’ll manage.” There’s a pause. “But thank you.”

Dean wishes he’d kept his mouth shut. Offering was bad enough. Being rejected is just embarrassing. He rolls over onto his side, his back to Cas, tucks his arms in with one hand under his cheek, and closes his eyes.

Dean’s eyes flick open again. “Since when do you need to sleep?” Dean asks, rolling back to face Cas again.

“I need to sleep because I feel unwell,” Cas says, impatiently.

“But angels don’t sleep.”

“Well obviously we do when we’ve been stabbed in the hand by a manticore,” Cas says, louder than before.

“Shh. Keep your voice down, you’ll wake Sam.”

“Then let me go to sleep!” Cas gives a heavy sigh, then there’s a moment’s silence, then a quietly muttered, “I give in,” before “I believe I’d like to take you up on your offer of sharing body warmth.”

“I thought you said you’d manage.”

“Dean,” Cas hisses, “I want to go to sleep; I believe I'm only going to be allowed to do that if you feel you are protecti… ” Cas hesitates, sighs again but more quietly, “… if I’m warmer.”

Dean shuffles closer. “Okay, if you really think that’s going to help.” Dean moves closer until he’s lying a few inches away from Cas. “Yeah, you’re pretty cold.”

“I thought you said I was too warm… never mind.”

Castiel picks Dean’s arm up by his wrist and drapes it over his chest.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re body is hot.” Dean succeeds in not laughing, but it’s close. “Your idea to share body warmth is actually a surprisingly good idea. I feel more comfortable already.”

“Yeah,” Dean smiles and shuffles in even closer, lining himself up right against Cas’s side, and moving his hand to settle around Cas’s far shoulder. Cas might be comfortable, but Dean isn’t particularly given Cas’s sweaty fever-heat but if Cas is good, Dean supposes he can martyr it out.

But let’s be clear about one thing - this is not cuddling; this is sharing body warmth.


	3. Watching a Movie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean misses Cas (after five minutes, the sap!); the manticore visits a toy factory; Dean and Cas watch security footage and eat nachos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I've fully encompassed the intention of the prompt-giver in this 30 day prompt-fest. I hope they don't mind.

There's a cold spot on the bed where Cas should be. Dean moves his hand around the spot experimentally, then in ever increasing sweeps of his arm, without opening his eyes, hoping to bump into warm angel, but after a minute of unsuccessful stretches as far as he can reach, he reluctantly has to accept that Cas is gone.

That does mean that Cas recovered enough to leave, and that's good. Except Dean can't ignore the guilty realization that he liked Cas being sick - not, like dying sick, obviously, but sick enough that he stayed, that Dean was allowed to take care of him, that Cas needed Dean for once.

Dean opens his eyes, and stares at the empty space beside him. Dean loves king-sized beds, loves spreading out diagonally across their wide expanse. The bed should not feel this empty. 

Cas is a bit of a grumpy bugger, he tries telling himself. Complains about Dean's car, steals his food sometimes, doesn't get his jokes. It's not working; he misses the bastard already, grumpy or not.

Sam's still asleep, lying on his back, arms akimbo, snoring like a trooper. Dean looks at his watch. 7:30am. God, Dean slept for six hours. When was the last time that happened? He must have been about three years old. That means Sam's been asleep for just over that, and try as he might, Dean can't find it in him to begrudge him that. 

He prods Sam awake on the way to the shower and when he comes back out of the bathroom, clean and wide awake, Sam pushes past him, muttering something about bathroom hogs and desperately needing to piss. Dean thinks about poking him in the bladder but the angle isn't right so he lets him off.

Sam's still in the shower and Dean's flinging things in his duffel bag, getting ready to leave, when Cas calls.

"I'm at the factory. The manticore killed again last night." No hello, no good morning, no how are you, no thanks for looking after me last night. Yep, that's his Cas.

"So, are you okay now?" Dean asks, packing as he goes. He tries not to sound too needy.

"I'm fine." Dean pauses to wipe a hand over his face. Why did he expect any other answer? "When can you get here?" Cas asks.

He looks at his watch. "8:30. Half an hour."

"Good." Cas hangs up. Dean didn't even get a chance to remind him not to try and do anything without them.

#

They get there at 8:25. Dean might have hurried Sam along a little. Cas is pacing outside the gates to the factory, wandering in and out of the street, at risk of getting himself run over. His bandaged hand looks comically large poking out of his coat sleeve. Dean would poke fun at it, but he's actually kind of proud how neat he made that bandage.

"They don't believe me," Cas says as soon as they climb out of the car.

Sam raises his eyebrows. "What did you tell them?"

"The truth."

"That'll be why they don't believe you - mythical creatures with poison dart tails? Does it sound real to you?"

Cas gives Sam a look that clearly says he thinks he's a blithering idiot. "Of course it does. It is real." Dean's gonna stop this before it escalates.

"Sam and I will change into our FBI getup and we'll all go and see what's what."

#

The factory manager doesn't want to let Cas in. Obviously, he's already made the wrong kind of impression. 

"He's our Mulder. Every office has one," Dean explains trying to convey empathy to the doubtful manager by twisting his features into an honest-looking face that says 'yeah, he might have a screw or two loose, but he's harmless. Trust me.' 

He puts a hand on Cas's shoulder to help show how harmless he is. Cas's warmth is bleeding through his coat. Dean wonders if he should reach that little bit further to the bare skin of Cas's neck - just to check he's got over his fever.

Sam clears his throat.

"Um," says Dean, trying to remember what he was saying, "So, how about you point us to the ruckus."

The ruckus is still in full swing, and the FBI are there already. Dean, Sam and Cas quickly backtrack, casually enough not to look suspicious to the manager.

"It seems some of our colleagues are already on to the site investigation," Sam says, "We'll look at the security footage - you do have security recordings, don't you?"

"Of course," the manager says, looking affronted. "We're not some Mickey Mouse operation here, you know."

Sam placates the manager all the way to the security room, where they're introduced to the security foreman, who takes them through their options. They end up getting twenty-four hours worth of recordings, downloaded onto DVDs to take away with them. Dean looks at them with dread. Most of the recordings are going to be empty corridors or people building jack-in-the-boxes (the factory makes toys). There are six cameras, times twenty-four hours. He's going to have to make this bearable somehow, and he's got an idea.

"Okay, Sam, um sorry, Agent Aldrin, this is what we're going to do. You're going to talk to some of the employees who were working shift when the murder happened, and Agent Armstrong and I are going to view the security footage."

Sam looks at him suspiciously. "You want to look at the recordings?"

"Yeah. Important stuff on here, I bet." Dean taps the pile of DVDs.

Sam grabs Dean's elbow and pulls him to one side. Cas and the manager watch from the sidelines. Cas turns to say something to the manager. The guy looks horrified. 

"Why do you want to look at the security recordings? What's going on?"

"Someone's got to speak to the staff, and Cas is no good at that."

"Cas might not want to do such mundane stuff anyway... he could fly around and see if he can find the thing's lair or something more useful."

Dean shakes his head vigorously. "Nope, not going to happen. That thing can kill him, Sam. He stays with one of us, and as you're going to talk to people, and as he's hopeless at that, then he's got to come with me to watch the recordings."

"You do know that's a circular argument?" Sam asks, then slowly dawning realization creeps across his face. "You want more cuddle time with Cas!" 

"We were not cuddling... we were sharing body heat. He was sick."

Sam smirks. "Yeah, right. Okay, you've got a deal. Just don't get so tied up in your sharing of bodily warmth that you miss the good stuff on the recordings, okay." 

"He was sick!" Dean insists.

Sam, the bastard, just laughs.

#

Dean puts in the DVD that covers last night, finds the time of the attack, and starts from an hour earlier. They'll play it from an hour before to an hour after, and if they don't get what they want, they'll add bits on at the beginning and the end. They just want to know where the things lair is; where is it coming from, where is it going to.

It's not quite movie night, but if he's going to be stuck in front of a TV for 2 hours, or longer, Dean's going to get something out of it. He makes popcorn. Cas looks at him curiously, but doesn't touch. He makes nachos and cheese sauce with jalapenos on top. Cas tilts his head, raises an eyebrow, sniffs and takes one, poking his tongue all the way out first to taste a little of the sauce. Dean stops what he's doing and watches. Cas's long agile tongue poking delicately at the sauce, then doing this little curly, twirly thing that is just... obscene... before putting the whole thing - nacho, sauce, jalepeno and all - on his tongue and pulling the whole lot back into his mouth.

"Dean? Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I'm good... I'm good... " Frigging hell. He sits down heavily on the couch cushion. He shuffles up so he's close to Cas... just so he can reach the snacks, obviously. Cas isn't sick any more so Dean's not entirely sure how close he can get before it becomes socially unacceptable. But then again this is Cas. Dean leaves two inches between them. He nearly chokes when Cas reaches out and puts his palm in Dean's.

"What are you doing?" he asks, hopeful and anxious at the same time.

"I liked it when we held hands yesterday, it made me feel more relaxed, and when we cuddled -"

"- that wasn't cuddling! It was sharing body warmth."

"I'm sorry," Cas says, starting to pull his hand away, "I misunderstood. You only did it because I was ill."

Dean wraps his fingers around Cas’s hand before he can pull it away and holds on tight. “It’s okay,” he says. “You know, if it helps you relax, it’s okay.” 

After all, Sam isn’t here and it’s just holding hands, right? Cas doesn’t know he’s supposed to be embarrassed. Cas is his friend. If Cas wants to hold hands in a totally platonic way then that’s okay with Dean. 

Totally platonic, Dean reminds himself, absent-mindedly circling his thumb over the smooth skin on the back of Cas's hand.


	4. On A Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Cas, this is a date.”  
> “A date?”  
> “Yeah.”  
> “What’s ‘a date’?”

There are three of them at the restaurant’s secluded corner booth - Dean, Cas and their waiter (Alphonse, if Dean were to believe the name label, which he doesn’t) - and the only one of them that’s one-hundred percent convinced that Dean and Cas are on a date is Alphonse. 

Dean had been convinced, but then he got confused somewhere between calling Cas, and Cas turning up.

What is a ‘date’ anyway? They have two hours before they have to meet Sam at the factory to go manticore hunting. Sam’s gone to sharpen his knives or something - actually, come to think of it, maybe Alphonse _and_ Sam know that Dean and Cas are on a date - but when does it become a date rather than just two friends meeting in a restaurant so one of them can eat, and the other one can creepily watch, and occasionally pick interesting-looking bits of food off Dean’s plate? (Dean is ordering Cas something whether he wants it or not; the waiter already thinks they’re odd after the battle he had getting Cas’s coat off him).

Except that Dean isn’t that hungry and he isn’t only here to eat, and Cas isn’t just a friend, but something more that Dean’s only recently started to figure out. Maybe that’s what makes it a date. 

Cas, of course, thinks that this is two friends meeting in a restaurant, etcetera. And that’s something that Dean needs to clear up, because Dean needs them to figure out the next bit together. Or at least he needs to know, before his recent obsession goes too far, that platonic hand-holding is as far as it’s going to go. One or the other. Preferably the former, obviously.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Dean starts, eyes on the menu, and not on Cas.

“What?” asks Cas, with only passing curiosity. Dean glances up, and Cas is glaring around the restaurant like a lion picking out the weakest zebra.

Dean takes a deep breath. He reaches across the table and puts his hand on top of Cas’s. Cas turns back to stare at him, then at his hand, then back at Dean.

The waiter comes across, smiles an I-totally-called-it smile, and lights the table’s candle. He drifts away, but not far. Dean knows the guy has half an ear cocked in their direction. Dean pulls his hand back.

“Cas… ” Dean starts, glaring at Alphonse’s back which probably undermines the moment he’s trying to create here. Unfortunately, it’s at this point he realizes he has no idea what he’s going to say. “Um,” he adds intelligently. Cas is nothing if not patient, and sits still and quiet looking at Dean and waiting for him to continue. Which is totally unhelpful in the current situation. 

“Cas,” Dean starts again. Then stops again. How the hell does he articulate this - how does he tell Cas that when he’s there - right there, like he is now - all Dean wants to do is touch him, to feel his heat, to feel his strength, to feel as if they’re the same flesh, one entity, not two; he wants to be so close to Cas that they’re intertwined, wrapped around each other. And if Dean’s going to get cheesy about it he might as well go the whole hog - Cas completes him. ‘I want to be your boyfriend’ doesn’t quite seem to cut it.

He should probably start with something a little less intense anyway.

“Cas, this is a date.”

“A date?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s ‘a date’?”

Oh, this is going so well. “A date is when someone who likes someone else asks that someone else to go and have dinner with them, or maybe see a movie, or… something,” Dean finishes lamely.

“You asked me to come and have dinner with you,” Cas states. Dean can almost see the cogs whirring.

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“You like me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, relieved that Cas got it so quickly.

“I already know that.”

“You do?”

“Or at least I’d assumed that, as neither you nor Sam seem to mind if I spend time with you occasionally.”

Sam? What’s Sam got to do with this? Oh, bugger.

“Um. No. I mean ‘like’ like.” Cas tilts his head. Dean cringes. “Cas, I want to be your boyfriend.” Cas doesn’t say anything, just stares, and the silence is excruciating. Dean rushes on. “But if you don’t want to then that’s perfectly fine, it’s just I thought you should know, you know, because of the hand-holding thing may not be quite as platonic as you thought and I don’t want you to think it is, because it isn’t and - ”

“Dean, shut up.”

Dean shuts up. He’d run out of sensible things to say a while back anyway.

Cas stares and thinks, then he says, “Can’t we just do what we always do?”

Dean’s heart flutters, and dies. “Yeah, of course. If that’s what you want,” he flusters, dropping his eyes and pretending to look at the menu. What the hell was he thinking? This was a stupid idea.

“Dean?”

“What do you want to eat?” he asks. Nothing happened here. Nothing to see. Move along folks.

Cas puffs in frustration. “I have no idea what I said to upset you, but I hadn’t finished - why can’t we just make it up as we go?”

That’s not a ‘no’ Dean notices, and his heart perks up again. “Yeah, we can do that,” Dean says. Now it’s his turn to stare and think, because it wasn’t exactly a ‘yes’ either. “But there are some things I want to do that boyfriends kind of get default permission for,” Dean says, “so how do I know it’s okay to do them?”

“Like what?” Cas asks, raising an eyebrow curiously.

“Like right now, I want to kiss you.”


	5. Kissing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "the first feel of Cas’s warm, soft lips on his sends such an embarrassingly intense tingling thrill through his entire body that he almost looks around for the fireworks"

Dean kisses Cas for the first time in the Impala, between the restaurant and the factory.

Cas’s brow furrows in concentration, he puckers his lips and pushes them forward looking not unlike a curious, but slightly nervous goldfish. 

Dean does not laugh. And that’s not as hard as it should be because something tells him that if Cas doesn’t enjoy this, they’re not going to do it again. Dean has never before been this terrified about a first kiss. Dean’s worried that Cas might have these extreme expectations like fireworks going off or something because Sam thinks it’s funny to keep showing him those damned chick-flicks. Dean knows he’s a good kisser (he’s been told this many times, so he sees no reason not to believe it), but he doesn’t think even he can manage fireworks. 

He comes close though. When Dean leans in across the seat and brushes his mouth against Cas’s lightly, the first feel of Cas’s warm, soft lips on his sends such an embarrassingly intense tingling thrill through his entire body that he almost looks around for the fireworks. Cas’s eyes widen a little, and Dean hopes he felt it too. 

At first Dean doesn’t move his mouth very far or very fast, kitten kisses, and controlled teasing until he feels Cas relax, his face less rigid, his mouth more pliant. Then Dean opens his mouth a smidge, and slides the moist inside of his lips along Cas’s, sucking just a little on Cas’s bottom lip, then his top lip, letting his teeth drag against the soft flesh a tiny amount each time he pulls away to pay attention to somewhere else. Who knew one mouth could have so many places Dean would want to pay attention to? 

He picks up Cas’s hand in his, pulls him a a lot closer, because their faces are touching but their asses are as far apart as it’s possible to get in the Impala, and he holds their hands between their chests while he keeps kissing Cas slowly, and tenderly. 

Cas copies him at first, following Dean’s mostly chaste movements with matching ones of his own until they’re both moving together, but then Cas pokes his tongue out and licks along the inside of Dean’s upper lip. Dean almost collapses into a pile of goo. It’s frigging hot. It’s especially hot that Cas is doing that because it feels right and because he wants to, and not because he thinks that’s what’s customary. It’s definitely hotter than it has any legitimate right to be when memories of Cas eating nachos for the first time, and thoughts of what else he might be able to do with that tongue, nearly knock through Dean’s chaste intentions with a goddamn battering ram.

The tongue thing does serve to give Dean a little more confidence that he’s doing the right things, and he moves his hand to the back of Cas’s head, pulling him in even closer, so there’s more pressure against their mouths, and he uses his fingers to tug gently at Cas’s hair to set Cas’s head at an angle so they can kiss deeper. Dean pokes his tongue out to meet Cas’s, presses the tip of his against the tip of Cas’s. Cas gives the tiniest involuntary groan right back in his throat, and Dean matches it without even thinking about it.

They’re still at it fifteen minutes later (Dean’s going to have some serious stubble-burn) when Dean’s phone rings.

“Dean? Where the hell are you guys?” Sam asks. He sounds pretty annoyed, which is probably fair enough, they are, after all, supposed to be on a hunt.

“We’re on our way,” Dean says, his voice sounding a little hoarse even to him.

“Are you okay? You sound rough?”

Dean swallows, and runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He can still taste Cas there; it’s stupidly overwhelming how happy that makes him feel. He looks across at Cas who is staring out the windshield of the car, but judging from the spaced out look on his face, Dean would hazard a guess that Cas isn’t seeing anything past the inside of his own head.

Dean clears his throat. “We’re fine. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” He hangs up before he gets any more questions.

“Dean…” Cas starts, then swallows, then licks his lips, “you have permission to kiss me whenever you feel it’s appropriate.”


	6. Wearing Each Others Clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a hunt and there's some making out.

Dean decides that kissing Cas ‘whenever he feels it’s appropriate’ translates into ‘whenever the hell he feels like it’. 

He also decides that kissing might not necessarily mean mouth on mouth, that ‘appropriate’ is entirely subjective, and that if Sam doesn’t like it then that’s just tough. He decides all this in the ten minutes it takes to get from the restaurant to the factory, and he’s only able to string coherent thoughts together to decide these things because Cas flew on ahead to placate Sam, and so is not currently sitting in the car distracting him.

Except the fact that Cas isn’t sitting in the car is equally as distracting when Dean can still taste Cas on his lips. He swipes his tongue over his lips. They’re puffy and tingly in all the right ways.

When he pulls up beside Sam and Cas in the factory’s car park, the first thing he does after climbing out of the car, is kiss Cas, because if he doesn’t get that out of the way, he’s not going to be able to concentrate on the hunt.

Sam rolls his eyes, and pulls a bitch face that says ‘seriously?’, and heads for the trunk. Presumably he’s still sulking because they’re late. As previously decided, that’s just tough.

Cas touches a finger to his lips, and asks, “Was that an appropriate time, Dean?”

“Absolutely,” Dean says confidently. Cas doesn’t look as if he entirely believes him, but seems happy to let it lie. Appropriate or not, it has the desired effect and Dean starts thinking about how to permanently take out a manticore instead of where and how soon he can next take out his not-boyfriend.

The factory has temporarily shut down its quieter shifts after the last death, so right now it’s empty. In the very near future, that’s probably going to drive the manticore out of its current hunting ground and further afield. At the moment, the thing’s contained in a manageable area. Come tomorrow night, it could be anywhere. 

Sam spent last night scouring some of the texts about manticores and came up with one possibly useful fact: although manticores prefer fresh kill, they’re not above eating carrion. That’s why there’s a trailer with a dead steer in it about ten meters away. 

They’ve got about two hours to set the trap as the manticore never shows much before the early hours of the morning. It should be plenty of time. Dean meets Sam at the trunk and they pull out nets, ropes, chains, and weapons. Sam grabs the first aid box too, because if anything goes wrong they’re going to be about ten minutes away from the car, and because last time was a near-disaster, apart from the usual bandages it now has a collection of drugs including polyvalent anti-venom, anti-histamines, cortico-steroids, and adrenaline for anophylaxis. None of which are likely to work, seeing they’re all designed to deal with snakebite. Part of Dean thinks he should point this out, but he suspects Sam already knows. 

He shuts the trunk and glances over to where Cas was, but Cas is gone. He knows he won’t have gone far; Cas is still here for the same reason Sam now has medical supplies to rival a hospital pharmacy in the first aid box - two nights ago, Dean was half a second, and the width of Cas’s hand away from a poison dart and oblivion. He hopes Cas has enough sense not to go near the manticore on his own, and sends a quick prayer involving a lot of cursing to that effect just in case Cas is listening.

Cas comes back just in time to help them move the steer into position in the center of the trap. ‘Help’ being a relative word in this context because he simply picks it up and flies it there. When Dean and Sam catch up, Cas is brushing cattle hairs off his coat with a disgusted expression.

“Is this going to work?” Dean asks him, looking doubtfully at the contraption they’ve constructed.

Cas glances hesitantly at Sam, whose idea it was in the first place. “Probably not,” he sighs, “You don’t get to be around as long as the manticore has without a modicum of intelligence and cunning. I don’t think he’ll fall for this at all.

Sam doesn’t look particularly surprised. He shrugs. “If it doesn’t work, I’m open to suggestions. You guys didn’t find it’s lair by looking at the security tapes, and Cas hasn’t been able to find it by flitting around, so… ” he shrugs again.

“Well, we’re here now,” Dean says, more enthusiastically than he feels, “we might as well give it a go. If it doesn’t work out, there’s barbecue for breakfast.”

#

They do know that the manticore comes and goes through the basement of the factory before and after kills even though they don’t know where its actual lair is, so the trap is set down there in a corridor that’s lined with storerooms. Some have metal grills over the entrance to the storeroom so that anyone in the corridor can see what’s being kept in there, some have solid doors. The trap is set on a short length of corridor where there are rooms with solid doors on either side.

Dean’s not happy that they have to split up, but the trap needs at least one of them on each side. There’s no combination of splitting up that Dean’s happy with but Cas makes the call, and he doesn’t get a say. Sam and Dean on one side together, Cas on his own on the other side. 

Sam, diligent little brother that he is, of course takes the opportunity to grill Dean about his date with Cas, and the kissing, and Dean retaliates by threatening to have loud, grunting sex with Cas in the same motel room as Sam for the next week. He’s fairly sure that’s not going to happen just yet given there’s a few steps in between kissing and loud, grunting sex that he and Cas haven’t covered yet, but Sam doesn’t seem quite as sure, so as a threat it works perfectly.

Dean thinks it would be good to have a few similar threats ready. He spends the time waiting for the manticore, thinking about fast, furious sex on the floor with Cas; quiet, slow sex in a comfy bed with Cas; naked bathing with Cas; sex in the shower with Cas - by the time the factory starts to come alive with the occasional noise of people turning up for the morning shift, and they decide the manticore isn’t coming, Dean’s a quivering wreck.

He leaves Sam to clear away the trap, with a muttered “I’ll get Cas to move the steer,” and dashes into the storeroom Cas is holed up in, slamming the door behind him. The room’s in total darkness - he can’t see a thing, not even make out shapes of things, but then Cas’s voice coming from his immediate left snaps his head around that way.

“Dean.”

“Cas,” Dean breathes. “Where’s the light switch?”

“It doesn’t work.”

The tips of Cas’s fingers reach him, curl into the fabric of his shirt and pull him to where Cas is. He must be sitting on a shelf or table or something, because his knees are what Dean hits first, knocking against his hip. He re-orients himself, turning into Cas, and then, suddenly he and Cas are both reaching for each other at the same time, hands grasping for shoulders, faces, hair, then their lips are pressed together in desperate kisses.

Cas drops his arms, his hands landing on Dean’s waist and sliding under the hem of his plaid button-up. Warm palms with just the right level of roughness slide up the skin on Dean’s sides, up and over his ribs, around and up to his shoulders. 

“Dean,” Cas says, “Is this okay?” 

Hell yes, this is okay. “Yes, anything you want. Anything.” 

Cas pushes at the shoulders of Dean’s shirt from under the fabric and Dean gets the message. He ducks his head and lifts his arms so that Cas can push his shirt all the way off, and then Cas’s hands are all over him, sliding up and down his ribcage, around his back, over his shoulders, down his chest, fingertips catching on sensitive nipples making him hiss with pleasure.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” says Cas, a little breathlessly. “I just know I want to touch you everywhere, as much as I can.”

Dean knows just how he feels. He puts his hands on the lapels of Cas’s jacket. “You’re doing everything right, Cas, believe me.” He pushes at Cas’s clothes. He persuades Cas’s hands off him long enough to push Cas’s jacket and trenchcoat all the way off, Cas’s hands go back to Dean’s sides as Dean finds Cas’s tie and slips the knot to loosen it before pulling it over Cas’s head still tied, the buttons on Cas’s shirt are too much fumbling and too slow so he takes a leaf out of Cas’s book, slides his hands under the hem to lift the shirt off and over Cas’s head. 

Then Cas’s skin is everywhere under Dean’s hands, unseen in the dark. Dean doesn’t need to see - he can picture through his touch the toned frame of Cas’s torso, the little muscles over his ribs, the strength in his shoulders, the shape of his biceps.

Cas slides forward in his seat as Dean leans forward to meet him, and their chests press together as they each wrap hands around the other’s back pulling each other in as close as they can get. They kiss, ravenously, passionately. Dean mouths at Cas’s jaw and Cas throws his head back, clasps his hand to the back of Dean’s head and pulls him in even closer. 

Dean’s stopped thinking, he no longer knows where he is, when he is, what he’s doing; he’s all instinct and CasCasCas. There’s moaning and nonsense muttering and he doesn’t know who’s doing what. Then there’s knocking and muffled calls, and… 

… oh, fuck! Sammy!

Cas springs back at the same time he does.

“That was Sam.”

“Yeah. Shit. It was.”

“Guys, are you okay in there?” Sam asks through the door, and there’s amusement in his voice. The door’s not locked so Sam’s not fooling anyone with his ‘I don’t know what you’re doing in there’ act.

“I’m sorry, I got carried away,” Cas says. Dean hears him stand up and starting to cast around for his clothes and Dean starts to do the same.

“You and me both. I didn’t exactly mind,” he says, struggling to regain some composure. He leans in to roughly where he thinks Cas’s mouth might be but kisses the bridge of his nose instead.

“Where’s my shirt?” Cas asks and Dean wipes a hand around the floor, finds buttons and hands the shirt over. He moves his hand around the floor until he finds more buttons and picks up the other shirt, pulling it over his head. While Cas is sliding the noose of his tie over the collar of his shirt, Dean finds Cas’s jacket and coat. He holds them up, turning Cas in the dark so he can shuffle into them.

“Ready?” Dean checks.

“Yes.”

They take a collective deep breath, Dean finds the door handle and opens the door. The sudden light is blinding for a moment, but when Dean can see again, Sam is standing right in front of him, trying very hard not to laugh and failing abysmally.

“What?” Dean asks, looking sideways at Cas to see if he’s any the wiser as to what has got his brother so amused. Oh. That’d do it.

Sam chortles. “Not that your tie doesn’t go really well with plaid, Cas, but I think the white button-up with the jeans is a bit too boys-band for Dean to get away with these days.”


	7. Cosplaying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Faced with literally thousands of monsters, heroes, mythical beasts, and aliens, how they’re supposed to find a real monster in amongst all the fake ones Dean has no idea."

The manticore might as well have disappeared off the face of the earth for all the signs they see of it over the next forty-eight hours. As Cas had said, the thing’s not stupid. It’s obviously gone into hiding hoping they’ll give up, but ‘give up’ isn’t exactly in the Winchester vocabulary. 

All the same, with nothing to go on, they’ve no choice but to wait for the next clue to turn up, and to hope that clue won’t be a well-chewed human carcass. They don’t know how long that’s going to take so in the meantime they go back to some semblance of their normal lives. 

That means Sam is looking for a hunt, preferably one that’s not too far in case they have to dash back for a bit of manticore ganking, and Cas has buggered off to northern Sweden to look for God in an igloo… or something. Dean’s not sure about the igloo bit - he wasn’t listening properly much beyond the point where Cas said he was leaving. 

He’d got used to having Cas around over the past week and had forgotten that he was there because they were hunting the manticore, and not because that’s where Dean was. He shrugs; he has to get over it. Cas is gone more often than he’s there. That’s not going to change because of a couple of kisses and a fumble in the dark. Cas won’t be wasting time moping about Dean, Dean’s fairly sure about that. It’s not logical to spend his time moping about Cas.

#

Dean mopes about Cas. Sam finds them a hunt at a science fiction convention. Dean didn’t think it was that obvious that he was missing Cas, but he can’t think of any other reason why his brother would cater to his geeky side. Sam hates this sort of thing, so the fact that he’s willing to do this is everything this side of awesome. Sam even gets them costumes - Dean is Captain Kirk, and Sam is a cyberman. He makes a frigging impressive cyberman, given his size. A number of Doctor Whos have already dashed smartly in the other direction when they’ve seen him coming.

Of course, it turns out to be one of those things that seemed like oh-so-good-an-idea when Sam first mentioned it, but now, faced with literally thousands of monsters, heroes, mythical beasts, and aliens, how they’re supposed to find a real monster in amongst all the fake ones Dean has no idea. They’ve been around the hall three times, walked through the expo, stood at the top of the stairs to gaze on the crowd from above, and now are back standing in the middle of the crowded hall, back-to-back, looking helplessly out at the people (mostly) milling around them. 

They’ve run out of all ideas, except one.

“Cas?” Sam says, turning to Dean with a look of desperation.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, quietly pleased it was Sam who suggested calling Cas first. It wouldn’t do for Dean to appear too needy in front of his little brother.

Cas turns up a scant five minutes after Dean calls him, damp, snow still compacted on the toe of one shoe, striding through the crowd, looking flustered, and mildly terrified. The smile on Dean’s face at spotting him slips away with worry. 

“That was quick,” Sam says, surprised, not seeming to notice Cas’s unhappy state.

“I was… um… ” he says uncertainly, eyes flicking nervously around the crowd.

“… waiting for Dean to call?” Sam finishes for him gleefully.

“It should not surprise you that I missed your brother, Sam Winchester,” Cas scowls, and Dean’s heart quietly does a little somersault. If Cas was closer, he’d kiss him, or at least he’d promise to kiss him later when they’re not in public. He’s not sure how well it’d be received right now though as Cas’s mind seems to be on other things, things that are currently scaring the bejesus out of an angel of the lord that Dean knows for a fact doesn’t scare easily. 

“What’s going on, why are there so many people, and why do they keep calling me Constantine? That isn’t my name.” Cas does a double-take, and looks them up and down. “Why are you dressed like that?” He looks around again at the sea of people, and back to them, and asks again, more fearfully than before, “What’s going on?”

Sam still seems oblivious to Cas’s anxiety and pushes on explaining that they need him to pick out the real monster from in amongst all the cos-players. Cas is listening but looks like he’s getting closer and closer to a full-blown panic attack at the thought of wading through all those people; his eyes are constantly moving, his arms are held tight against his sides, his fingers curl and uncurl as he’s jostled by the crowd around him. Once or twice he looks desperately Dean’s way. Dean wants nothing more than to take the two steps necessary to reach him, hug him and make him feel safe, but it’s a bit public. Like very public. Like thousands of people public.

Like what the hell does he care, he’s never going to see any of these people again, and even if he was, he’s not sure he’d care. It’s a hell of a lot more important to him to make sure Cas is okay than it is to worry about what other people think. 

He takes the two steps necessary, wraps his arms around Cas, pulls him close against his chest and hugs him, stroking his back. Cas is a little surprised, even stiffening up more than he was already at first, but then he relaxes, and Dean hears a whispered “Thank you,” in his ear. He pulls back, meets Cas’s stare, and takes hold of Cas’s hand. 

“You missed me?”

“Of course.”

“Me too,” he says, still meeting Cas’s wide, appreciative gaze with his own, and squeezing Cas’s hand so that Cas knows he’s not going to let it go,“Okay,let’s go gank this son-of-a-bitch.”


	8. Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Cas go to Lapland. There's a bit of shopping. And a little bit of hurt/comfort. But mostly there's just schmoopy stuff beyond belief.   
> I should warn for a small mature bit towards the end, if you don't like that sort of thing.

“Come with me,” Cas says.

Dean’s got the key half way to the Impala’s door when Cas speaks. He lifts his head, and turns to face Cas. 

“Just until tomorrow,” Cas adds.

“Where?” Dean asks.

“Kiruna.”

“Which is?”

“Lapland. I didn’t finish what I was doing there. Come with me.”

Dean glances towards Sam. He’s changing out of his cyberman outfit behind the cover afforded by the back of the car, bundling the costume into a tight ball to put it into the trunk. Dean hopes he’s keeping the monster blood on the inside, and not getting it all over his car. Dean’s Captain Kirk outfit was a write-off, and is lying in a dumpster outside the convention’s main hall. The blood Cas had on his coat sleeve has miraculously disappeared. The monster is a pile of ash in the building’s basement furnaces. Dean has nothing he has to to do before tomorrow. He could go with Cas, and he wouldn’t be letting anyone down.

“Angel airways?” Dean asks, screwing his nose up involuntarily.

“Yes.” 

“It’s March. Isn’t it a bit cold in Lapland at this time of year?” 

Cas doesn’t notice the weather, but all Dean’s got to wear is three shirts and a leather jacket. He doesn’t know a lot about Lapland but isn’t that where Santa comes from? With all his thick clothes and his fur to keep him warm in the extreme cold, and his sled so he can travel on real snow, which is cold, and his reindeer which are designed for really cold weather. Like it’s really cold, if he’s not getting that across, and he’s fairly sure he’s not gonna be very comfortable in his three shirts and leather jacket.

Cas tilts his head. Dean can see him thinking. He gets this little squinty look when he’s thinking, trying to work Dean out. 

“Yes. You’re right,” Cas says eventually, “Never mind. It was a stupid idea.”

Cas turns away to look back at the hall and Dean grabs his elbow, pulling him back around to face him. “I’m not saying no,” Dean says, “It’s just I don’t have anything to wear.” 

Sam coughs, loudly and obviously, and Dean looks up to where he’s standing just behind Cas.

“Can I help you, Samantha?” Dean asks. “We’re trying to have a private conversation here.”

“I’d be careful who you’re calling names, Deanna,” Sam says, smirking, “given you’re the girl in your relationship.”

“I am not,” Dean says automatically, and then asks, just so he’s clear, “How the hell do you work that out anyway?”

“The way I see it, Cas asked you on a date, and you complained you didn’t have anything to wear. How does that not make you the girl?”

“It’s Lapland. It’s in the frigging Arctic Circle. It’s cold,” Dean hisses.

“Lapland. Awesome,” Sam says, his eyes widening. “Cas, if Dean doesn’t want to go, I’ll go with you.”

“Dean does want to go,” Dean says.

“I thought you didn’t,” Cas says, looking completely confused. 

“Can I get warmer clothes?” Dean checks.

“Of course.” 

“Then I’m coming with you.”

Cas looks at Dean, then Sam, then back to Dean. He doesn’t look any less confused. “Good?” he says as if it’s a question.

#

They land in the changing room of a clothing store, and it’s really, really warm which is one hell of a surprise, and because it’s also really, really private behind the curtain, Dean leans in and kisses Cas. It feels like an age since he last had the chance, and it’s even better than he remembers, mouths slotting together naturally and easily as if they’ve been doing this for years, not days.

“It’s damn hot in here,” Dean says, pulling back far enough to talk, his forehead resting on Cas’s. “If this is the temperature, I’ll be fine. I don’t need new clothes.”

“It’s not,” Cas says, his breath tickling Dean’s lips. “They have excellent heating and insulation in their buildings in Sweden. It’s currently minus ten degrees Celsius outside.”

“Why is a conversation about heating and insulation turning me on?”

“You are sexually aroused?”

“Hell, yes,” Dean whispers. 

Cas pushes him away with a shy smile, which is all kinds of ridiculous on Cas. “Later,” he says cryptically.

“Really?” Dean raises an eyebrow, optimistically. Then more worried, because let’s be honest, this is Cas, he asks, “What exactly is happening later?”

“Wait and see,” Cas says.

“Okay,” Dean says, not bothering to pursue it. He figures Cas will tell him in his own good time, and it doesn’t have the air of ‘deadly-or-life-threatening’ about it. He hadn’t exactly expected to get it on in the changing room of a clothing store in Lapland anyway. 

“So what do I need?”

Cas has no idea. Dean doesn’t know why he expected anything else; he supposes he should be impressed that Cas even knew what a clothing store was, let alone where to find one in Kiruna. Dean goes to the window to peer out into the street and see what other people are wearing. Experimentally, he wanders outside to see what minus ten degrees Celsius feels like in his current outfit. It feels frigging cold. His hands don’t just get cold - the heat is literally sucked out of them within a couple of minutes.

He ducks quickly back into the store. Cas is watching him curiously, in silence, head tilted at precisely thirty degrees.

Dean wanders around the store, which isn’t very large, picking up what he thinks he’ll need. He gets a pair of thermal gloves to wear under a pair of waterproof ski-type gloves, padded over-pants, thermal underwear, a huge blue padded jacket, a thermal vest, micro-fleece shirts, two pairs of thick socks, a pair of boot things that go over the top of his normal boots, a scarf-come-muff, and a rabbit-skin hat. And then, even though Cas doesn’t need any of that, he makes Cas get the same because if Dean is going to look like a dork, so is Cas. He knows the fake credit card he has with him can handle it. 

He hands over his phone to the amused shop assistant to take a photo of them in their new outfits, and he texts it to Sam. He gets a text back pretty quickly that just says ‘Have fun.’ 

Dean looks at the message, and he realizes he is having fun. They’ve been here an hour, he knows Cas has some stuff to do, but even so the whole trip has a kind of holiday atmosphere to it. He looks over at Cas, and all he can see is blue eyes staring out at him from between a moss-green scarf, and a rabbit-skin hat. He loves those eyes. He coughs to hide that particular sappy thought.

“Where to now?” he asks. This is Cas’s show; Dean’s happy to follow for once.

“I’ll conclude my business,” Cas says, “two hours, perhaps three.”

“Is it dangerous?” Dean knows it’s a stupid question as soon as it’s out of his mouth.

“No more than usual,” Cas says, which isn’t in the least bit comforting.

Cas won’t take Dean with him. He’s adamant it’s somewhere Dean can’t go, and Dean has no choice but to relent. Dean spends the time wandering around the small town, trying not to worry. Dean doesn’t do the traditional tourist thing well. He’s not that interested in shopping or in old buildings so the time Cas is away passes slowly and in the end he finds himself a friendly, warm cafe, and commandeers the corner table which comes with an unnaturally comfortable couch, and a scarily large collection of magazines and books about Volvos. 

After three hours, and no Cas, Dean’s actively fretting. Three and a half, and he’s staring out of the window no longer able to even pretend to read the magazines. It’s been nearly four hours since Cas left when he finally gets a text message asking where he is.

Five minutes after Dean replies, Cas walks, or rather limps, into the cafe. Dean’s out of his seat as soon as he sees him. He grabs Cas’s arm with one hand, and Cas winces.

“Cas?” Dean asks, dropping his hand completely, not sure where he can safely touch.

“I’m fine,” Cas says, sitting down in the couch Dean steers him to with a level of care that implies all sorts of unseen injuries. He gives a small humorless smile. “This isn’t uncommon. I don’t heal as fast as I used to. It will pass.”

“I’ve never seen you look like this, man,” Dean points out, concerned.

“I don’t usually turn up until I’ve healed,” Cas says with a small smile. 

That’s just awesome. Dean really wanted to know that Cas gets injured on a regular basis, and doesn’t come to him for help. “Next time this happens, you come to me. This is not okay,” Dean says, carefully helping Cas take off his scarf, hat and gloves.

“You have bigger things to worry about,” Cas says, as if he really believes that.

Dean pulls Cas’s right arm out of the sleeve of his thick, padded coat. “You, Sam and Bobby are what I worry about,” Dean says. “You come to me. I don’t want to think about you sitting on your own somewhere waiting for this crap to ‘pass’. Do you understand?”

Cas glances sideways at him, but Dean brings his hand up to cup Cas’s jaw and turns his head so he’s looking directly at Dean. “Do you understand? You’re important to me, I care about you, and this is not okay.”

Cas looks surprised at the vehemence in Dean’s voice. “I understand,” he says after a moment. 

Dean strokes his thumb over Cas’s lips. “Good.”

Dean tugs Cas’s coat over the wrist of his left arm. “They have awesome mulled wine here - do you think that will help this to pass?” he asks, to break the tension.

Cas smiles. “Yes, I think it will.”

#

The mulled wine is amazingly good, warming but too weak to make Dean drunk. When Cas gets less stiff, and stops wincing with every movement, they order reindeer steaks that are so tender they don’t even need to chew, the meat just dissolving in their mouths. Cas makes noises that would be banned from a pornographic movie as being too explicit, and Dean starts to catalog all the foods he can get Cas to try that will elicit that response. 

Not surprisingly, Dean re-discovers his good humor from earlier in the day. Cas too is winding down from angel-of-the-lord to the way he sometimes gets when it’s just the two of them, and they’re not in the middle of a battle. Dean’s decides he loves this cafe where no-one seems to mind that he and Cas are sitting on the couch, effectively snuggling, Dean’s arm over Cas’s shoulder, holding hands and occasionally kissing. He almost feels like they’re normal people, a normal couple with normal lives. 

“So, what now?” Dean asks, twisting his fingers in and out of Cas’s. “I seem to remember you mentioned something about ‘later’, and it’s getting kind of late.”

Cas gives an embarrassed laugh that gets Dean’s curiosity up. “You might think it’s a bit - “

“- cheesy?” asks Dean.

“I was actually going to say overly romantic,” Cas says, raising an eyebrow.

“Same thing,” Dean says, leaning in to kiss Cas, slowly pulling away with a soft suck on his lower lip. “To tell you the truth, this whole thing’s kind of overly romantic, but I’m finding I don’t mind in the least.”

“In that case,” Cas says, “your chariot awaits.”

Dean raises both eyebrows. Right now, Cas’s face is reading ‘very worried’. Dean is not a douche-bag - well hardly ever - okay, not often - but even if whatever Cas has laid on for tonight is frigging awful, Dean swears he’s going to pretend he’s enjoying it.

They put on their new outdoor clothes, so only their eyeballs are showing (”What’s the temperature out there now, Cas?”, “Minus twenty degrees Celsius, Dean”), and they leave the warmth of the cafe, to walk out into the crisp, fresh air. It’s not really that late, about six in the evening, but it’s completely dark. The lights in the town hide most of the stars but they can see enough to know it’s a cloudless sky.

When they’re outside the restaurant, they turn a corner into an empty service alley, and Cas apologizes, raising two fingers to Dean’s forehead. “It’s very short, I promise. I thought a reindeer sled might be too much, even for tonight.” Dean laughs out loud, and he’s still laughing when they touch down somewhere just as snow-covered, crisp and cold as where they left, but now in a village, not the town.

“Where are we?”

“Jukkasjärvi.”

“Say again?”

“The Ice Hotel,” Cas says, taking Deans shoulders and turning him around to face the other direction.

And that’s what it is, literally a building on one story, the size of a warehouse, made of ice. 

“That’s a hotel?” Dean asks, not able to keep the awe out of his voice. “People stay there?”

“We’re staying there.”

“You’re frigging kidding me.” Dean turns to Cas, and looks at him suspiciously. “You’re not going to propose or anything are you?”

Cas laughs. Dean stares at him. Cas never laughs, not really. “This area is my favorite place on Earth,” Cas says. “Except for two weeks in the summer when the mosquitoes are unbearable. But other than that… “

“You’ve been here before? You didn’t come here looking for God?”

“No. You assumed I did. I didn’t correct you. I had a friend here.”

“Had?” Dean asks, fearing the worst.

“It’s too dangerous for her now. Today’s battle showed that. She can’t meet me any more.” 

Cas looks up at the sky for a moment, saddened, but then his face lights up with what Dean can only describe as joy. He grabs Dean’s arm and points, and directs Deans gaze upwards. The sky is alight with green shimmers that flicker and fade, and glow.

“The Northern Lights?” 

“Yes. Isn’t it beautiful?” Cas asks, “More beautiful I sometimes think than Heaven itself.”

Dean lowers his gaze and looks at Cas. Cas is more beautiful to him than Heaven itself. He’s never seen Cas like this, with his guard down so far. Tomorrow, they’ll go back to real life. “Cas… “ Dean starts. He’s not sure what he’s going to say, but he suspects it’s going to be mushy as all hell.

Cas turns to him. “No.” he says. So Dean doesn’t.

Cas takes Dean’s hand and they cross what Cas explains is a frozen river. The Ice Hotel is built afresh each year, he says, using ice from the river. He looks quite put out when he explains how tourism demand has changed that, that they have to start building now, using ice from elsewhere, before the river freezes. 

Dean’s been trying to show Cas Star Wars, and Cas is showing him this. How can that be equal? Cas seems to read his mind. He turns to Dean suddenly.

“You show me so much, Dean. This is all I can show you.”

Dean reaches for him, for the ridiculous jacket he doesn’t need, fumbles as he wraps his gloved hands around the padded material, pulls Cas in to meet him, pulls down his own scarf so he can kiss Cas’s eyes and his eyebrows because it’s the only frigging part of him he can reach. 

Cas takes his hand again and tugs, and they carry on across the ice.

Check-in is weird, and Cas is no better at it here than he is in America, but he seems to be determined to fumble through, like this is his gift to Dean. He waves Dean off when Dean tries to help. He gets stuck around the time they ask him what kind of sleeping bag they want, and even Dean is in totally unfamiliar territory here. He’s never been asked that before when checking in to a hotel. The guy on reception isn’t surprised by their confusion, he deals with clueless tourists every day, and he explains the different warmth categories that they have, and asks if they want singles or a double.

“Double,” Cas says at the same time as Dean says, “Singles.” 

They stare at each other, each trying to read the other’s thoughts. Dean’s not sure he’s going to be able to control himself in a double sleeping-bag with Cas.

“Singles,” Cas says, as Dean says, “Double.”

The guy gives them a double, without blinking, and tells them that if they change their minds, they can undo the zips and pull them apart into singles. He shows them how.

Cas hasn’t actually stayed in the Ice Hotel before either so they explore together, which is surprisingly nice. Their room turns out to be nothing more than a hollowed out square of ice, with a sort of bed covered in reindeer skins in the middle, lights cleverly built into the ice, and absolutely nothing else. All the bathroom facilities are outside in a more permanent structure. There’s a curtain over the room’s entrance rather than a door. 

They wander around the hotel for an hour looking at the ‘posh’ rooms, and the ice statues carved everywhere, and Dean’s never seen so much awesome. The hotel is a consistent minus five degrees Celsius, so it’s even relatively comfortable, dressed up as they are. They find the bar, of course, and settle in there, drinking various concoctions of fruit and spice vodkas served in glasses made of ice. Dean takes it slow, not wanting to waste the night getting drunk.

They turn in early, crawling into the double sleeping bag together, bumping into each other as they strip down to boxers and nothing else, lying for a moment far enough apart that they can stare at each other. Dean for one is not really sure what’s going to happen next. He doesn’t know if when Cas said ‘later’ he just meant the whole shebang, or if he meant specifically, this. Whatever ‘this’ is.

Cas reaches out, smooths his hand over Dean’s shoulder and down his bicep, over his forearm to take his hand and pulls it to his mouth and kisses Dean’s knuckles. Dean closes the distance between them, meeting Cas with a kiss, sliding his hand over Cas’s waist, and around over his back, up his spine, flattening his palm over Cas’s shoulder blade to draw him in close. There’s an unhealed scar there, under Dean’s fingers, but when Dean frowns, Cas kisses the frown away, his hand stroking down Dean’s side, and over his hip, resting in the small of Dean’s back.

“Either or both of us could be killed on any given day,” Cas says, “I don’t see the point in denying ourselves what we both want.”

“You’re giving me the ‘last night on Earth’ speech?” Dean says, snorting in amusement.

“Is it working?”

“Yeah, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“I’m sure.”

Dean shuffles back a bit so he has space to reach down the sleeping bag, and watching Cas the whole time, he grabs the waistband of his boxers and lifts them over his erection, down his legs, and off. Cas copies him, and the head of Cas’s penis nudges Dean’s balls as he twists his knee to kick his boxers off over his feet. Dean shuts his eyes tight, and bites his lip. Cas’s knee comes up to Dean’s hip, and he tucks his ankle behind Dean’s calf. It has the predictable effect of sliding their cock’s together between them, and Cas gives a little grunt in the back of his throat. 

It’s immediately obvious that Cas knows the mechanics of what they’re doing, but he doesn’t have the experience of what feels good and what doesn’t, so Dean leads, slipping his hand between them, takes them both in his fist, and starts slowly stroking. He pulls and tugs, runs a thumb over both heads, slides the sticky slickness down their shafts, and picks up a rhythm. Cas puts his hand on the back of Dean’s head and pulls him in to a kiss that is more a sharing of breath than a kiss-proper. Cas pants and groans, not knowing not to, and Dean muffles it with his own mouth on Cas’s, conscious of the lack of soundproofing in their room but not wanting to teach Cas that noise is bad. 

Cas comes first, shuddering from head to toe as he does, and a few short strokes later, Dean follows, his body spasming in a pleasure he didn’t know it could feel.

He whispers to Cas, “Is this real? Tomorrow, in Utah, will we still have this?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Cas asks, leaning back, looking genuinely bewildered by the question. 

“No reason,” Dean says, pulling Cas back in close against him, tracing the unhealed scar on Cas’s shoulder with his forefinger, and thinking of all the ways real life could mess with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been to Kiruna in March three times, and stayed at the Ice Hotel twice, and have really enjoyed my trips there. It's a while since I've been though, so if I've got anything wrong because of outdated information, I apologise. Please forgive me.


	9. Hanging Out With Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's macho auto-pilot creates a short-term problem.

They leave Kiruna to fly to the motel the next morning comfortable, relaxed and holding hands. Sam can cope. Only it’s not just Sam - it’s also Bobby, Rufus, Ellen and Jo, and Dean drops Cas’s hand like he got an electric shock off it before he has time to engage his brain. 

Everyone in the room looks up at their arrival, and Dean looks across at Cas, barely has time to register the hurt expression on his face, let alone do anything about it, before he’s gone.

Fuck his macho auto-pilot.

“What just happened?” Sam mouths silently at him.

“Cas feeling his usual social self, I see,” mutters Bobby.

“He, um, I think I might have done something to upset him,” Dean admits. “Not really his fault.”

“What did you do?” Bobby asks.

Oh, not much, Dean thinks, just threw his hand away like I was allergic to him after I promised him nothing would change when we got home. Dean doesn’t say that. He’s probably being over-dramatic anyway. Cas is sensible. He’ll come around. 

“Why is everyone here?” Dean asks, instead. He’s fairly sure he can get away with avoiding answering Bobby’s question because Bobby isn’t really interested, just being polite.

“Vamp nest,” Rufus says. “Huge.”

“Don’t worry,” says Bobby, when Dean looks alarmed, “we’re just passing through.”

“We know you’ve got your manticore thing going on,” Ellen says, taking a swig of what looks like Dean’s good beer.

“Not worried,” Dean says, wondering how soon he can text Cas, “It’s good to see you all.” And it would be at any other time except now.

He slips his phone out. ‘Sorry’ he texts.

Fifteen minutes, and a beer later, he gets a text back. ‘No need. I understand.’ Which means of course that he doesn’t understand at all.

‘Stop sulking’ Dean sends.

This one comes back sooner. Dean hit a nerve, obviously. ‘I’m not sulking’.

“Who are you texting?” asks Jo, “Everyone you know is here.”

“Except Cas,” says Ellen. “What was it? Lover’s quarrel?”

“We didn’t quarrel,” Dean grumbles, looking up in horror when he immediately realizes his mistake.

Jo’s hand flies over her mouth. “Oh, my God. I knew it!”

“No you didn’t,” Ellen says, but she’s smiling.

“Do I want to know about this?” Bobby asks.

“Probably,” says Sam. “You might need to give the bride away at some point.”

“Sam!” Dean snaps, reaching out to try and swat his brother but Sam’s too quick. Sam’s also starting to type on his phone and Dean suspects that’s not good. “What are you doing, give it here.”

“Will that work?” asks Jo, peering over Sam’s elbow at the screen.

“I guarantee it,” says Sam. He hits send.

Cas appears ten seconds later. He looks around the room, confused as he has every right to be. His eyes settle on Dean briefly.

“Sam - nothing appears amiss. Dean’s fine.” 

“The only thing that’s amiss,” Sam says, “Is my brother’s an idiot.”

“I don’t understand.”

Everyone is now looking at Dean in expectation, even Cas, who’s presumably hoping for some clarity.

Dean stands up and walks over to Cas. “Cas, I’m an idiot,” he acknowledges, before taking Cas’s hand, and planting a fairly chaste kiss on Cas’s lips. He’s tempted to embarrass every single douche-bag in the room by trying to assault Cas’s tonsils, but that’s hardly fair on Cas.


	10. Hurt/Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Cas is flat on his back, arms flung wide and high above his head, fingers lax and curled into his palms, his eyes closed. A single black dart sticks obscenely out of his chest."

The call from Cas is a call to arms.

“I’ve located the manticore.”

“Where?” Dean asks, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, instantly awake and alert. He checks his watch. It’s two in the morning. He only went to bed three hours ago, still it’ll have to do.

“Moab”

“That’s about… “ Dean does the maths in his head, makes hurry-up-we’re-leaving motions with his hand at Sam, who’s also shaken himself quickly awake, “three hours away.”

“Manticore?” Sam asks, and Dean nods.

“Don’t try anything on your own,” Dean says into the phone. There’s no answer. “Cas? I mean it.”

“I believe I can take the creature out on my own,” Cas says, with a huff that Dean recognizes as ‘I am frustrated by your need to protect me’, “but I will wait for you if I can. However, you should know it’s on the move. If it threatens someone, I’ll have to act.”

“Okay, I guess,” Dean says, then adds, because he can’t help himself, “just be careful.”

“I will.”

#

They cover the drive in two hours and forty-five minutes. There’s no traffic at that time of the morning, and it’s possible Dean might have broken a speed limit or two. The need to get to where Cas is, and quickly, is overwhelming. He knows that if the opportunity arises, Cas will try and take out the manticore by himself. 

Aside from the obvious desire to kill the thing before it can kill anyone or anything else, Cas would do it just to prove to Dean that he can, and it’s not that Dean doesn’t believe that Cas can, because Cas is an awesome angel warrior, and he’s seen him take out a lot worse, it’s just that… that… Dean slams a palm on the steering wheel, and Sam jumps in surprise. Dean’s let himself care about Cas, and the way Dean sees it, that means Cas’s chances of surviving in general got a hell of a lot worse just by association - and, let’s face it, they weren’t exactly that hot before, what with no access to the power of the Host, and all the forces of Heaven and Hell gunning for him.

To get to Moab and find that Cas has actually not taken on the manticore solo, is both a surprise and a relief.

Cas is loitering - it’s the only word Dean can think to describe it - hands in pockets, peering around a corner, keeping a very close eye on one particular wing of the local college. He looks like a creepy stalker so it’s lucky it’s too early for anyone else to be around. Cas spots them easily as they cut across the staff parking lot and he waves them over, indicating they should keep out of sight. They cut across to the wall, and skirt along it until they reach him. Dean lifts a hand to Cas’s shoulder and squeezes gently in greeting, leaning forward to whisper into his ear.

“Hi,” he says. 

“Hello,” Cas replies, turning his head so that his cheek brushes lightly against Dean’s lips. Dean grins like he totally didn’t plan that. Cas settles for a fond smile, and Sam rolls his eyes. Life is normal, then.

“What’ve we got?” Dean asks more seriously, peering over Cas’s shoulder, across at the other part of the building, and beyond that a football field. He can’t see anything happening.

“The manticore’s inside,” Cas says, “I believe it’s changing it’s feeding pattern. I believe it’s waiting for people to arrive.”

Dean looks at his watch. “Could be,” he says, “someone will probably turn up to open up the building soon, and the first students won’t be far behind, but I’m guessing it’ll go for the janitor.”

“Do we actually have a plan?” Sam asks. “What’s the layout?”

“We don’t have time to set a trap like we did at the factory,” Cas says, “but from where it is now it will be easy to entice it into that dead end,” he points indicating the far wall of the building. “I’ve been in there. There’s no room for it to maneuver to be able to fire the poison darts from its tail, and its teeth are just big teeth - nothing we haven’t handled before.”

“So you’re saying we trick it into cornering itself, stay out of the way of its mouth, then we shoot it?” Dean asks disbelievingly. “We’ve been hunting this thing for weeks, you really think something that simple is going to work?”

Cas glares at him. “I’m open to alternative suggestions.”

Dean exchanges a look with Sam, hoping he’s got an idea because Dean’s got nothing. It just sound’s too easy, and nothing in their life is that easy. 

Sam shrugs. “Nada,” he says. “Let’s give Cas’s plan a shot. What have we got to lose?”

Dean should have had warning bells, if not blaring sirens, go off in his head when his brother said that.

#

They refine the plan slightly, but not much. Cas is no good with a gun, so Sam and Dean are going to bait (Dean really wishes they had another word to use) the trap, and Cas is going to block the creature’s exit route just in case it makes a run for it instead of being a good monster and just sitting there quietly while Sam and Dean shoot it. Cas won’t be able to see Sam and Dean, or the manticore, from where he’ll be waiting, so if the manticore gets close enough to Cas that he can let off an angelic thunderbolt without also hitting Sam and Dean, then he’ll do that, but that’s kind of their last resort, given the space they have to work with is so small. 

To hear Cas tell it, the biggest danger they face is that Sam and Dean will shoot each other in the confines of the room. 

There’s not a lot that can go wrong before they actually spring the trap, so it’s not surprising that getting the manticore to follow Sam into the room, Dean creeping up on its other side, and Cas manning the exit all goes according to plan. It’s about five seconds after that that everything goes to hell.

Dean shoots at the thing at the same time Sam does, they both hit it square on, and it drops to one side, thrashing around, but by no means out for the count. Dean leaps out of the way of the deadly tail that hits the ceiling, then the opposite wall, then the wall by Dean’s head all of about a meter away. The manticore might not be able to shoot the darts from its tail but every time it hits something, a dart gets left behind, embedded in plaster, and dripping what Dean assumes is venom, from the hollow end, as well as, presumably, the hidden needle-like point. Sam’s almost better off with the front end, and the teeth, which aren’t doing anything at the moment other than being bared menacingly. 

Cas must be worried by all the noise, because his anxious voice calls out both their names from further back. Dean yells back at him, in case he thinks it’s a good idea to come charging in to help out, “Stay there,” and lets off another volley from his shotgun. He’s rewarded with a howl and the tail hitting the wall where his head would have been if he hadn’t had the foresight to duck. The manticore gets up to its feet, bleeding all over the place, but still frigging alive. Sam fires. It flings its head sideways at him with an angry roar, and just catches him enough to send him flying in to the corner of the room.

“Sam,” Dean yells, probably loud enough to be heard in the next state. The manticore turns towards his voice, swings that deadly tail around towards Sam as he does so, and Dean does the only thing he can think of, and he yells for Cas. 

Cas runs in, angel blade flashing silver, face mad as hell, takes no time at all to assess the situation. The manticore is obviously doing the same, eyeing the direction Cas came from, and its escape, with intent. Cas takes two steps sideways, grabs Dean’s shoulder and pushes him further into the room away from the manticore’s jaws. The creature tries to take a bite out of Cas, but he steps back neatly, and it misses. Cas gets a swing of his blade in, and although he’s too far away and it doesn’t do any real damage, there’s a satisfying distressed growl. 

Cas starts making his way back towards Sam, who’s still down, conscious but dazed. The thing tracks Cas, swings its tail and hits the wall to the right of Sam. Dean yells a warning, and Sam has enough wherewithal to hunker further down out of the way. The tail hits the other wall next, the way Cas is going, but nowhere near him. The sharp, black foot-long darts from it’s tail are embedded everywhere, leaking their potentially deadly venom, and Cas is ducking and weaving to avoid them as he makes his way back towards Sam. 

The thing takes two struggling steps forward towards the exit, and Dean’s fine with that. Live and fight another day is his motto. He silently urges it onwards, and out. It twists its head in indecision to look back at the room, then at its way out, then back again.

Dean offers up a silent prayer of ‘just go, just go, we’ll get you next time, you son-of-a-bitch.’ He doesn’t know if it hears him or not, but it finally makes up its mind for flight. The manticore lets out an almighty threatening roar that rattles the windows in their frame, and gives two more mighty thrashes of its tail that Dean hears rather than sees as he watches it run for the exit, dragging one limp front leg, and trailing bloody pools after it.

He’s never been so relieved to see a monster get away from them before. He turns to Sam and Cas, ready to share that relief with a few heartfelt expletives thrown in for good measure, only to be brought up short, his breath catching in his throat.

Sam looks up at him, his face is a picture of absolute horror. “He’s not breathing.”

Dean’s dizzy, thinks he’s going to be sick, actually physically throw up. A long drawn out, “No,” comes involuntarily from his throat. He scrambles across the floor towards them.

Cas is flat on his back, arms flung wide and high above his head, fingers lax and curled into his palms, his eyes closed. A single black dart sticks obscenely out of his chest.

Dean hastily takes off his jacket, wraps his hand in the sleeve, then yanks on the dart, pulling it out in one swift movement. “He’s not staying dead,” he says to Sam, with a conviction that has absolutely no basis in fact, only faith. He wraps his jacket around the dart. “When Cas starts breathing again, they’re going to need to know what the poison is.” He tugs at the buttons on Cas’s shirt, pulling it open, and looks at the wound, blood trickles away from the site and down Cas’s ribs but not much, the flow stopping when Cas’s heart did. Dean’s used to being able to stitch things up to make them better but there’s nothing here he can do.

“The first aid kit,” Sam says urgently, and Dean remembers it’s just outside the door. All the stuff he didn’t think would work on them, let alone on Cas. He fetches it anyway, and Sam rings for an ambulance and then starts CPR. 

Dean takes all the stuff out of the kit, but doesn’t know what to do with it. Or rather he did until his brain went numb with panic. He fumbles, and Sam takes it out of his hands, and just starts shooting Cas full of everything in there. Dean picks up on the CPR, tilting Cas’s head back and filling his lungs, doing it again, then again, then finding that point by his sternum and pumping his chest, trying to coax his heart back into life. This is his thought process now, pump, breath. He can’t afford the other thoughts that are threatening to drown him. The ones that say he can’t lose Cas, that it’s not fair, it’s not fair. He tastes salt on his lips from an errant tear, and licks it away.

Something, of all the things they’re trying, works. Dean’s not sure what it was, but Cas takes a gasping breath, and his heart picks up a slow rhythm just as the sirens from the ambulance can be heard outside. Dean rests his head on Cas’s chest, and listens to his feeble heartbeat, grabs his hand, and holds it so tight he’s probably going to bruise it.

Sam goes outside to fetch the emergency crew, while Dean stays with Cas. Cas’s breathing is ragged and fragile, his heartbeat slow and unreliable. Dean squeezes his hand, leans down and kisses his forehead, tells him to wake-the-fuck-up right now. “Remember Kiruna, you bastard? You told me we could have that. You better keep your frigging word.”

When they reach the hospital, there’s hours of pacing, and questions and the only indication that Cas isn’t dead is that there’d be no point to some of the questions if he was: is he on any drugs (not yet - what? - never mind), what’s he had to eat today (he hasn’t eaten anything for almost two days as far as Dean knows - no that’s not unusual, and it’s not unhealthy, trust him), what did Sam pump him with (Sam tells them, and gives them the empty packaging - they tut), does he have any allergies (he’s allergic to dying, shouldn’t you be in there fixing him - sir, you’re not being very helpful).

The hospital staff go away. Dean decides that’s worse. No-one comes to tell them what’s going on for a long time. Dean knows the manticore’s poison makes Cas appear human, have normal human physical reactions, shuts down his grace effectively, but he’s still got a niggling worry that Cas will show some kind of supernatural phenomenon, or maybe wake up, panic and say or do something that gets him locked up or down or shipped out for science experiments somewhere. Or maybe he’ll die forever and have enough grace left to scorch black wings- 

“Stop,” Sam says sharply, both hands on Dean’s shoulders holding him still. “Stop worrying so loud about stuff that might not happen.”

Eventually, someone comes and gets them, takes them up to ICU tells them they can see their brother one at a time, not to worry about all the equipment, about the tubes and drips and monitors, and the ventilator. It’s all just precautionary as the poison has caused some temporary paralysis which has caused Cas’s heart and lungs to stop working properly. 

Sam is asking the doctor a whole bunch of what no doubt are very important questions, but Dean doesn’t listen - he stares through the glass, itching to get in there, and touch and verify for himself that Cas is still alive. He can barely see him in amongst all the equipment - a glimpse of an arm here, a knee there, a tuft of dark hair on a shock-white pillow. 

Finally the doctor walks away, and before Dean goes into the room, Sam tries to summarize. Dean tries to listen, he really does. It’s probably important.

“He’s unconscious, and probably will be until tomorrow, but apparently that’s nothing to worry too much about. He’s going to be okay but it’s going to take at least a few days - I don’t know how that’ll translate for Cas though, we’ll have to see. They narrowed down the poison and have given him an anti-venom, and we’re going to have to get a supply of that by the way if we’re going to hunt the manticore again. The ventilator and all that stuff,” Sam waves his arm at the room, “is going to stay for twenty-four hours, just to be sure… and you’re not listening to a word I’m saying are you?”

“What?” Dean says, turning to focus on Sam briefly, before turning back to Cas.

“Go,” Sam says, “go see him. I’ll wait here, but if he wakes up, let him know I’m here.”

Dean stays with Cas until he does wake up, six hours later, bewildered, grumpy about all the tubes and machines, and apparently feeling ‘unwell’. He can’t talk really because of the ventilator, but Cas has never had a problem communicating his displeasure with his eyes, and he’s putting that skill to good use now. Dean sarcastically tells him it’s adorable, but he thinks he might actually mean it. 

Dean lets him know Sam’s there, waiting beyond the glass, and that Dean’s not going anywhere. Dean holds his hand, whispers in his ear that he’s glad he’s alive, and when Cas grumbles “me too,” kisses him on the cheek. They’re supposed to be brothers so he keeps it chaste, not that there’s much opportunity for unchaste anything. 

Cas falls asleep again soon after that, Dean still holding his hand. Dean remembers the first and last time he saw Cas sleep, when the manticore stabbed Cas in the hand. He doesn’t have the bandage anymore, and Dean can only see the small pinprick scar if he looks carefully. He remembers his guilty thinking that he liked having Cas sick, so that he could take care of him. 

Scratch that. Cas is never, ever allowed to get sick or injured again. Dean makes a mental note to tell him that the next time he wakes up.


	11. Making Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hospital that thinks Dean and Cas are brothers, and one way they find to work around that.   
> Warning: excessive schmoop.

Telling the hospital that they were all brothers was the worst idea ever in the existence of ever. Cas thinks so too, and for the same reasons as Dean. 

Sam sighs heavily, objecting, Dean knows to the fact that he’s said this before. “We already had enough paperwork for the brothers thing, and it did get us in to see him.” 

“But - “

“But nothing,” Sam says, starting to wave his hands around in agitation, “In case you two don’t remember, Cas was dying at the time. Surprisingly, on the car journey from the scene of Cas’s near-death to the hospital, I didn’t think to create new paperwork that said ‘significant other’. Okay? I’m sorry. I’ll do it so that it’s ready for next time.”

Dean begrudgingly accepts that until what Sam said sinks in. “There won’t be a next time,” he says pointing a finger accusingly.

Sam smiles. “So Cas is your ‘significant other’, then?” he teases.

Dean’s macho auto-pilot is out to lunch. In fact he thinks it might have gone on an extended holiday. “Yes,” he says, squeezing Cas’s hand tighter in his. He glances sideways at Cas, but Cas has his eyes shut, and Dean finds it quite hard to read him when he can’t see his eyes. Still Dean’s fairly sure Cas would let him know quite quickly if he was saying anything that Cas didn’t agree with. 

Sam shakes his head. “Fine. I don’t know why this is such a big issue, anyway, it’s not as if Cas is up to… up to… actually, I don’t want to think about it.”

Sam’s kind of right. It’s the day after the hunt and Cas is out of ICU, in a private room. He’s off the ventilator, but still attached to monitors, and an IV drip. On top of that he feels like crap. Cas didn’t use quite those words but that’s what Dean’s interpreting from the grumbles and the complaints. 

Despite that, both he and Cas are frigging ecstatic that Cas is alive and they would both like to express their feelings of ecstasy in a less than brotherly way. A kiss on the lips, a bit of comfort snuggling. That’s all. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, in their world, it is.

“I just want to kiss him, Sam,” Dean says, feeling defeated. He looks at Cas, who is smiling at Dean’s words. “What are you grinning at?” he asks him, fondly because it’s good to see Cas smile given the circumstances.

“I liked hearing you say that. I want to kiss you too,” Cas answers.

Dean’s brain takes a metaphysical shift off to the left somewhere. “Sam, could you give us, oh, I dunno, half an hour?” he says, still looking at Cas. Cas’s eyes open, and he raises an eyebrow.

Sam wipes a hand through his hair, and looks at Dean suspiciously, but then just shrugs. “Sure. I need a coffee anyway.”

Cas keeps staring curiously at Dean, as Dean pushes the door of the room closed behind his brother. He can’t do anything about people looking in through the glass windows that span the width of the room, but he can do something about them hearing what’s being said.

Dean sits down by Cas’s bed, takes his hand back, because he’s allowed to do that and even if people think it’s odd between two thirty-something brothers, they’ve got used to it.

“If I could,” Dean says slowly, watching Cas, “I’d lean over you, and I’d kiss you on the lips.”

Cas smiles. “I’d like that,” he says.

Encouraged, Dean carries on, “And if I could, I’d put my palm on your chest, over your heart, so I could feel you warm and alive.”

Cas raises both eyebrows, pauses hesitantly for a moment, then says, “If I could, I’d put my hand over your hand to keep it there.”

Dean grins. “If I could, I’d lie beside you on that bed, and I’d hold onto you.”

“If I could, I’d put my arm around your back and pull you closer.”

“If I could, I’d put my fingers in your hair, and I’d hold you so I could kiss you properly.”

“If I could, I’d twist your head a little to the right so that I could kiss the corner of your mouth that’s the first to move when you smile.”

Dean smiles wider. “If I could, I’d let you duck your head into that spot you seem to like between my neck and my shoulder, even though your hair tickles my chin.”

Cas chuckles. “If I could, I’d slide my hand under your shirt, and find that place between your shoulder-blades where, when I spread my fingers out, my hand fits perfectly.”

“If I could, I’d stroke my hand down your ribs and I’d find that ticklish spot just above your hip.”

“I should never have given that away.” Cas laments, amused.

“And if I could,” Dean says, more seriously, “I’d whisper in your ear that you scared the shit out of me yesterday, and that I love you.”

Cas hesitates. “You could do that.”

“I could,” Dean says. He leans across, whispers in Cas’s ear, “I love you.”


	12. Eating Ice-Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a recuperating angel, ice-cream, and because I decided they'd earned it, some sexy times.

"Well?"

"Can I taste the second one again?"

"Sure." Dean dips the spoon into the blueberry ice-cream, lifts it up to Cas's mouth, which is open wide, patiently waiting. When Dean puts the spoon up to Cas's mouth, resting the spoon on Cas's bottom lip, Cas closes his mouth around the spoon, and slides the contents off. His tongue comes out, and delicately licks away the dribble that is threatening to escape down his chin.

"You do that on purpose, I swear," Dean says.

"What do I do on purpose?" Cas asks, feigning innocence.

Cas's hand goes up to adjust the blindfold, and Dean bats it away.

"You might cheat."

"I'm an angel - I wouldn't cheat," Cas says indignantly.

"Yes you would. I'll do it." Dean tightens the blindfold - a dish towel of Bobby's - and checks to make sure Cas can't see out of any gaps at the bottom.

"Why don't you just tell me which is your favorite?" Cas asks.

"Because you have to guess. You only get an orgasm if you guess."

Bobby mutters something unintelligible, and leaves the room.

"Considering Bobby's been kind enough to give us space in his home to allow me to recuperate, I think we should make an effort not to upset him," Cas says.

"Probably," Dean says, enjoying this too much to care about Bobby's sensibilities. "Which one do you want to try next?"

"I haven't tried five or six at all yet," Cas says, "I believe I'd like to do that."

"Okay, here's five." Dean lifts the spoon filled with chocolate mint flavored ice-cream, and Castiel scoops it into his mouth. Even though there's no dribble to lick up, he still flicks his tongue around his lips.

"See, totally on purpose."

"I might have possibly done that one on purpose," Cas says, and he smiles the little smile he only brings out especially for these occasions. Dean kisses him because he thinks it's appropriate.

"Ah, ha!"

"What?"

"Let me taste number four again."

"You haven't tasted number six yet."

"It doesn't matter, let me taste number four."

Disgruntled (because six is 'death by chocolate' and he was looking forward to seeing Cas's face when he tasted it), Dean feeds Cas the spoon of number four ice-cream. Cookie-dough.

"This is your favorite," Cas says, triumphant. "Number four."

"Well, yeah, but how... ? Are you sure your angel mojo hasn't come back yet?"

Cas takes off the blindfold. "You kissed me. I could taste it on your mouth. It just made sense you'd be eating your favorite while we played the game."

Dean looks at him. "I'm not sure if that's cheating or not," he says.

"It's not cheating, it's just logic. You owe me an orgasm."

Dean leans in. "You want it now?" he asks quietly with a smirk, "here? In daylight, in the middle of Bobby's living room? 'Cos, I could do that if you wanted."

"I would like it now, in daylight, but upstairs in our room, if that's alright."

"I think I can manage that," Dean says. He stands up, and waits for Cas to do the same. 

Cas is two days out of the hospital, and he's still weaker than he should be. He's taken exception to being molly-coddled though, which Bobby approves of (because nobody molly-coddles him when he's sick), Sam objects to (because Sam's a frigging girl), and Dean pretends to let him get away with while keeping a careful watch to make sure he's there to catch him if he falls. So while Cas might have just won himself an orgasm for the first time since the manticore incident, Dean's going to make sure it's one of the laziest orgasms Cas has ever had (not hard given he can still count them only using the fingers of one hand.)

Cas, however, seems to have a different plan, turning Dean, and pushing him against the wall as soon as Dean shuts the door to their room behind them. There's no strength behind it but it takes Dean by surprise, and he lets out a high-pitched yelp that he hopes to hell none of the other occupants of the house heard because he'll never be allowed to live it down if they did.

Cas seems to find it amusing. Of course he would, the bastard. The corner of Cas's mouth twitches in an almost smile, and Dean scowls at him.

"I'm bored. Entertain me," Cas says, voice as low and gravelly as it ever gets, and it has the usual effect on Dean's dick, which is to bring it to almost instant attention. 

Cas has Dean pinned against the wall, scant inches between them, his long fingers wrapped around Dean's wrists, holding Dean's arms in place at his sides. Dean knows that right now he could easily pull away if he wants to, but he doesn't want to. He smiles mischievously. "Make me." 

Cas's narrows his eyes, answering the challenge. His head leans forward to meet Dean's, and he presses their lips together. He takes his hands away from Dean's wrists to cup either side of Dean's face. Dean closes his eyes in pleasure at the feel of Cas's fingers spreading a web of warm, gentle pressure against his jaw and his cheeks, all the way up to his temples. 

Dean shifts his mouth against Cas's, and they find the places they naturally fit, moving against each other, warm slides, suckles, teeth lightly scraping, tongues pushing and tasting, heads tilting to find the angle they know works best for them. 

Cas steps closer, until their chests just meet and he stumbles a little, falling suddenly, and too fast against Dean. He tenses, then tries to hide it. It's a tiny almost imperceptible break in his rhythm, but Dean notices it immediately. It's a discomfort Cas would choose to ignore, but Dean can't, and won't. He reluctantly eases Cas back.

"I won't risk hurting you," he says, "so take it easy, hotshot." He smiles and cards his fingers into the hair at the base of Cas's skull to take away any of the sting Cas might mistakenly read into his words. Cas stares briefly, but then nods his head once sharply in acceptance.

Dean kisses him again. Turning Cas around Dean lines his chest up against Cas's back, drops his hands to Cas's arms. Cas lets his head fall back onto Dean's shoulder, his hair soft on Dean's cheek. Dean's palms skim down Cas's flanks to the hem of his shirt and he pulls, his intent obvious, and Cas raises his arms so Dean can pull it off. 

Dean loops his arms around Cas's waist, kisses the back of his neck, then works his way slowly down Cas's spine with his lips, one bony knob at a time. Cas leans back against Dean, little moans passing his lips with every press of Dean's mouth against his skin.

When he's reached as far as he can, to the barrier of Cas's waistband, Dean drops to his knees and turns Cas around to face him.

"Cas," he groans in a low rumble against Cas's belly. 

There's an answering moan of "Dean," from above, and the muscles of Cas's abdomen tense under Dean's lips. 

Dean sits back on his heels, pulls his shirt off and throws it out of the way. Then he stares up at Cas, catches his eye, and makes sure he's watching as he pops the button on his own jeans, lowers the zipper. Cas is watching, staring, and Dean's eyes track down the heady flush on his neck and upper chest. The frightening reminder of Cas's near-death, the circular, fading bruise over his heart, catches and holds Dean's attention as it always does.

"Don't," Cas says. He lowers a hand to rub blunt fingertips through Dean's hair and against Dean's scalp, and Dean pushes up into it gratefully, without thought.

Dean raises his eyes to the safe haven of Cas's gaze, and nods, smiling. He raises his butt off his heels, lowers his jeans and boxers to his thighs. His erection stands proud, red, expectant against his belly. The tip is leaking and slick. He keeps watching Cas watching him as he wraps one hand around the shaft, his breath coming in short, wanting gasps as he slides the pad of his thumb across the head, lifts his hand back to Cas's waist and circles his thumb, wet with his own pre-cum, over the jut of Cas's hip bone.

"Dean," Cas moans, low and desperate. "Not fair."

Dean chuckles, shuffles so he can slip his jeans and underwear all the way off, dragging his socks off with them. He's buck-naked in front of Cas and he lifts his hips in wanton, and completely unselfconscious display.

"You do this to me," he says, staring up at Cas, "You make me want you so frigging much."

Cas drops to one knee, leans in to kiss Dean - his lips, his jaw, his eyebrow, the tip of his nose. Cas's hands slide down Dean's ribcage, unhindered to his hips, around to cup his ass in both hands. He squeezes, then he stands up again, undoes his belt, then his pants, lowers them over his penis, slides them down his thighs, past the dark hair on his shins, till they pool around his ankles. He steps out of them, reaches down to take Dean's hand, and Dean holds onto him as he pulls himself up.

They go to the bed. Dean lays Cas out on his back and lays himself along his side, slowly circling his groin against Cas's hip while tracing a warm palm along Cas's thigh, his hip, his abdomen, and finally, his cock, velvet skin against Dean's palm as he slides up from Cas's balls to the tip, circling the ball of his hand against the hardness under it. Cas groans, and arches up sharply into the pressure, and Dean lays a hand on his hip to keep him still, leans in, whispers, "remember - the hospital said no excitement," and he's rewarded by a choked curse in guttural Enochian. He grins against Cas's shoulder, feels Cas's soft skin against his lips as they curl up.

He wraps his hand around Cas's cock and starts to stroke him, squeezing and twisting at all the right times. Cas rolls onto his side to face Dean, reaches his hand down, mirroring Dean's actions. Dean moans, groans and whimpers Cas's name in a dozen different ways, and when Cas tilts his head back, muttering a long litany of "Dean... Dean... Dean," Dean places his mouth on Cas's neck, pushes the tip of his tongue against the comforting strength of Cas's pulse.

Dean's eyes are closed as he comes, his head thrown back and a loud, "fuck, Cas," ripped from his throat before he even has time to think about holding it back, his cock pulsing hard as it ejaculates between them, warm splashes against his belly again, and again, until he can't believe there can be any more, but still it twitches as Cas keeps stroking him through it.

Then Cas says, "Dean, open your eyes," in a wrecked voice, and Dean does, catching Cas's eyes, just as his dark eyelashes flutter briefly, and Cas comes over Dean's hand in hot, wet spurts, gasping open-mouthed, his hips moving in little abortive, irregular thrusts.

"Cas," is all Dean can think to say, breathlessly, when it's over.

"That was... enjoyable," Cas pants, as if he's been taken completely by surprise.

Dean snorts a laugh. "Good." He lifts his arm and wraps it over Cas's shoulder to pull them together.

Dean's going to find out what Cas's favorite ice-cream flavor is later.


	13. In A Different Clothing Style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas gets his mojo back but ruins the happy atmosphere when he reminds everyone that means manticore hunting resumes. Also, Dean gets his panties in a twist over something girly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter didn't flow off the keyboard as easily as some of the others, so I apologise in advance for the below-average standard. Also, only a very brief nod to the prompt. These two things may not be mutually exclusive. :o)

There’s a slight breeze, oh so familiar, that tickles the hair on the back of Dean’s neck before it stills. He turns around with a smile.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says.

“Got your mojo back then?” 

“Yes,” Cas says, and then he’s gone.

Dean grunts instinctively in irritation, but then the smile comes back. Nothing’s changed, everything’s back to normal; he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sam wanders into the kitchen, empty cup in his hand. “Cas got his mojo back I see.”

“Yeah. He come and tell you?”

“Sort of,” Sam says, huffing a short laugh. He rubs his head. “He made me jump. I banged my head.”

“Let me guess - he said, ‘Hello, Sam’ and then disappeared?”

“Actually he said ‘Sorry, Sam’ and then disappeared, but you’ve got the general idea.”

Bobby’s the next to appear, grumbling under his breath, wiping oil off his hands with a paper towel. “That boy got his mojo back. Did you know?”

“Yeah, we know,” Dean says, “He’s been showing off.”

“Happy, I guess,” Bobby says, throwing the oily paper towel into the kitchen sink. “That mean you boys are out of my hair soon?”

“Aw, c’mon Bobby, you love having us here,” Dean says, teasing.

“Sure I do,” Bobby says, “And I love the fact that I’m eaten out of house and home, that I don’t get to pick what to watch on my own damn TV, and,” he says, glaring pointedly at Dean, “my nights - and my days - are interrupted by the sorts of noises I’ve only heard before in a porn movie.”

Dean grins, unrepentant.

“It’s new love,” Sam says. “Next time we come to stay, Cas and Dean will be past the hot, noisy sex stage of their relationship.”

“Never,” says Dean, “Hot, noisy sex with Cas is - ”

“Ahem.” 

Dean whirls around, “Cas, dude, we were just talking about you.”

Cas has gone a pretty shade of pink, and he glances down quickly at the floor, then the kitchen cabinets, then the table - in fact anywhere he can find except at one of the three other people in the room.

Dean slips an arm around Cas’s shoulders which doesn’t seem to help.

Cas speaks to one of the kitchen chairs. “Now that I’m recovered, we need to continue our hunt for the manticore.”

Dean’s not sure that any other statement could have killed his mood faster. 

It’s not that Dean’s forgotten about the manticore, or even fooled himself that this little pocket of cosy domesticity they had going here would last, but he has been pretty successful at putting it way, way at the back of his mind. 

“Maybe someone else could do it?” he says, knowing even as the words leave his mouth that it’s not fair to put someone else in the firing line.

Dean knows Cas understands when Cas looks up, and catches his eye, gazing intently.

“Come with me,” Cas says, taking Dean’s hand. 

A second later they’re alone in Bobby’s workshop. Dean takes only a moment to re-orient himself, before he and Cas each take an intuitive half-step forward to enfold each other, their chins resting on each others shoulder, their cheeks warm together side-by-side as they talk.

“How can I make this easier for you?” Cas asks. “I’ll do anything that’s within my power.”

The question throws Dean into confusion. It’s not a question he was expecting. He’s not even sure Cas would have asked it before this week - he’d have been all ‘suck it up, it’s our job’, Dean’s fairly sure.

“Make it safe - for Sam, for you, for me.” Sure he’s bitter, but it’s not Cas’s fault, and the apology is immediate. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Cas says soothing a hand up and down Dean’s back, and it’s so nice that it’s frigging pathetic. Dean needs to stop this now before he starts blubbing. 

“It’s okay, Cas, I know we can’t make it safe. It’s our job right? But… ” Dean reaches a hand to the back of Cas’s head, pinches a few errant hairs between his fingers and pulls sharply. Three near-black hairs are plucked from Cas’s scalp.

“Ow!” Cas pulls back, trademark confused head tilt and eyebrow raise all in one go. “What did you do that for?”

Dean twirls the strands of Cas’s hair between his thumb and forefinger, then tucks them into the top pocket of his shirt. “At least now if you die I’ve got something to remember you by.” He winks at Cas to let him know it’s a joke. Except it’s not a joke. Dean’s suddenly realized if Cas dies those three hairs are probably all he’ll have left to remember him by, and immediately he knows he’s going to take them out of his pocket and put them somewhere safe before the shirt goes in the wash. At the moment, they’re quite safe next to his heart, thank you very much. And fuck, he did not just think that.

“Dean are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Dean says, more sharp than he’d intended, “Moment’s over, Cas.” He tries to ignore the look of hurt confusion on Cas’s face.

#

It’s about an hour after that Dean notices both Cas and Sam are missing. 

He texts Sam because Sam is more likely to answer straight away, Cas still struggling with what difference it makes that his reply is five minutes after Dean’s text, or five days. 

He gets an immediate text back, ‘We’re both okay. Back soon’. Potential panic is averted.

Five minutes later, he gets ‘you’re going to love this.’

The problem with texts is he can’t tell if Sam is being sarcastic or not.

Thirty minutes later, “Do you prefer silver or gold?”

What the - ?

Ten minutes later, “or Pewter.”

\- fuck? 

He texts Sam. ‘What are you two doing?’

Sam texts back. ‘It was Cas’s idea. Cas says it’ll make you happy.’ 

All that does is narrow it down to either Sam thinks it’s a good idea and he wants Cas to get the credit, or he thinks it’s a bad idea and he wants Cas to get the blame.

‘Do you like engravings, or do you think that’s too much?’ Sam texts.

Dean goes back over every conversation he’s had with Cas this morning to work out what Cas might have decided will make him happy. Other than “fuck, yes, do that again,” which isn’t actually a conversation per se (although it did make him happy, but he hopes like hell that Cas hasn’t gone shopping for sex toys with Sam), there’s only really the conversation in the workshop. Dean knows there’s nothing Cas can do to keep them all safe, so… oh, crap. Dean pats his shirt pocket, where the three strands of Cas’s hair still sit (he hopes - he resists the temptation to take them out to check). 

Silver. Gold. Pewter. Engraving.

He prays to a god he knows isn’t listening that his brother and his angel-not-boyfriend-significant-other aren’t picking out rings, because it sounds to Dean like they’re picking out rings. It would be just like Cas to decide on some huge frigging gesture to make Dean feel better, and Dean’s not ready for that yet - for the ring thing. He paces up and down the living room carpet until Bobby growls at him, and asks him what the hell’s going on, then he goes outside and paces up and down the yard.

‘Pattern or plain?’ Sam’s next text asks.

Dean sweats. What’s he going to say if Cas tries to give him a ring? He’s hardly going to reject it. It’s just that a ring is a huge thing. And if Cas gives Dean a ring, is Dean going to have to get Cas a ring? Cas doesn’t wear any jewelry - Dean knows he purposefully stashed Jimmy Novak’s watch and wedding ring somewhere for safe keeping for months, only giving them back to Jimmy’s wife when Jimmy’s soul passed. So maybe Cas won’t want a ring. But if Cas doesn’t want a ring why is he getting Dean a ring? And goddamn it, if Dean’s going to wear Cas’s ring, Cas is damn well going to wear Dean’s. He wonders what Cas would like. Something plain probably, and silver would go with his blue eyes. Dean’s should be silver too then; they should match. And there should be a simple engraving, something like ‘D&C’, or maybe even C&D? (nah, doesn’t have the same ring to it - no pun intended, Dean tags automatically on to the end of that thought) nothing fancy, but something. So that they know; so that if something happens to either one of them, the other has something that is theirs.

He texts Sam. ‘Silver. Plain. Nothing fancy on the engraving.’ Not that he wants a ring, but if he’s getting one he might as well get what he wants.

Cas and Sam arrive back an hour later, landing in Bobby’s den decked out in frigging armor. Not the whole suit, just breastplates, a kind of skirt thing that covers their groins, metal whatever-they-call-them over their shoulders. Cas is smiling, and Sam is laughing. 

Sam hands over Dean’s - plain, silver, a simple coat-of-arms engraved over the belly part. Just as he asked. 

They’ve obviously enjoyed themselves wherever it was they went to get the armor. Armor. Not a ring.

“Dean, are you okay?” Cas asks. “I thought you’d be pleased. These will keep us all safer.” Cas had looked so proud and pleased when he and Sam had flown in, all kitted out, and now he’s about to tip over into confusion, and disappointment, and he won’t have any idea what he did wrong because he didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just Dean and his stupid imagination, and seriously at this rate he’s going to have to start wearing dresses.

“Yeah,” Dean says, dredging a convincing smile up from somewhere, god knows where, his hand going up to sit over his shirt pocket with a mind of its goddamn own. “It’s awesome, Cas.” He looks at his brother and Cas again, and he laughs because they look frigging ridiculous. Then Bobby’s laughing too, and Sam’s buffing his breastplate with his elbow, and grinning like an idiot, and Cas gets his smile back. 

Yeah, this’ll do. Having his family safe and happy is a lot more important than a frigging ring, and, well, Dean’s still got those three hairs.


	14. During Their Morning Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Dean’s going to kill him. Only not now. Now he doesn’t have time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning (of sorts): Dean's annoyed and he swears a lot in this.

“Sam! It’s fifteen minutes to. What the hell are you doing in there?”

“I’ll only be five minutes, Sam yells back. “I’m just washing my hair.”

Oh, f…

“If you’re not out of that bathroom in two minutes flat, I’m coming in anyway.” Dean starts pacing. His frigging brother and “I just need a piss, Dean,” and twenty minutes later, he’s still in there. Using up all the hot water as well, Dean bets.

The sound of the water running stops and the bathroom door creaks at frigging last. Dean checks his watch, six-fifty. Friggingfuckdamnballs. He shoves the door all the way open, making a surprised Sam leap backwards out of the way before it slams into his face. 

“Out,” Dean says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bedroom, face like thunder.

Sam smirks, the asshole.

This has been the norm for the past two weeks since they left Bobby’s - Sam trying every which way he can to mess up Dean’s morning ritual, and enjoying it too frigging much. The last two weeks have been manticore-less and too easy. Sam can handle those run-of-the-mill supernatural creepy-crawlies with his eyes shut. He’s like a bored teenager. Or the fucking trickster. It’s like mystery spot all over again, only each morning Sam’s sees it as his duty to find a different way to fuck up the most important part of Dean’s day. Dean switches on the taps for his ten minute sprint (thanks to his frigging brother) through a shower and teeth cleaning (shaving will have to be skipped - he just doesn’t have time). 

It’s two minutes to seven. Dean’s got a bit of floss stuck between the two molars at the back and the floss has caught on a little chip he has on one of the teeth and it’s fraying in his mouth in his desperate attempt to pull it free.

“Dean,” Sam shouts through the door, drawing the phrases out into the smarmiest voice Dean has ever heard. “One minute to go.” 

Frigging bastard!

Done. Thank f… never mind. Done. Look in mirror. Hand through hair. Hair’s still wet from the shower. Damn. Can’t do anything about it now. No time. Why is that bit sticking up? Spit on finger, and pat it down.

“Thirty seconds.”

Frigginggoddamnbastard!

Okay, good enough. It’ll have to do.

Dean grabs the handle of the bathroom door, flings the door open, steps outside. Sam is sitting on the single chair in the room, laughter tears streaming his face, almost doubled over with mirth. Dean’s going to kill him. Only not now. Now he doesn’t have time.

“Five seconds,” Sam snorts out through fits of giggles.

There’s a flutter. 

“Hey, Cas.” Dean smiles. Sam cracks up. Cas stares at him. Then up at Dean, bemused.

“Don’t frigging ask,” mutters Dean.


	15. Spooning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spooning and sex. But mostly sex. In fact it's almost all sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is late, RL got away from me yesterday, and this prompt wasn't supposed to be either this long or have this much sex.

Cas hasn’t brought coffee. 

Sam looks disappointed and grumbles about selfish angels, but Sam doesn’t know what no coffee means. Dean does, and he hates no coffee days. 

Cas looks around for a second chair but there isn’t one, so he lowers himself carefully onto the end of the nearest bed instead. Dean watches him, and notices the way he’s favoring his right side, but it’s not obvious unless you know to look for it. 

“You going any time soon, Sam?” Dean asks his brother, knowing Cas won’t allow any ‘care’ to take place with Sam in the room. “Only me and Cas want to have awesome, noisy man-sex and if you don’t go soon, we’ll have to start with you still here ‘cos you know we can’t keep our hands off each other.”

Cas huffs in amusement, a sound Dean is glad to hear - the injuries are obviously not too bad.

Sam makes a ‘yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before’ complicated hand motion, and makes no attempt to leave. The guy’s still grinning like an idiot at his morning attempts at humor.

Dean takes two steps to where Cas is sitting, kneels in front of him and undoes the button on his pants. Cas looks startled but he’s got nothing on Sam.

“Holy, frigging… Okay, Dean, I’m going, I’m going. Jeez,” Sam picks up his laptop, and two of his books.

“You know if you keep pulling that face Samantha, it’ll stick that way.”

“You’re going to damage me with all those unwanted images floating around in my head,”

“I only undid a button - it’s your disgusting imagination doing the rest,” Dean says, enjoying the horrified truth that dawns on Sam’s face when he says it. “Should I be worried that you’re having impure thoughts about my significant other?”

“Shut up,” Sam says, a hint of blush rising on his cheeks. He shoves his things quickly into his bag and hoists it over his shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we don’t have to leave until lunchtime, and no, I don’t want to know what you can get up to in five hours.” He grabs the door handle. “If you’re ready to leave sooner I’ll be in the coffee shop on the corner.”

“I won’t be. We’re going to use the whole five hours for… ”

“Don’t want to know, Dean,” Sam says as his parting shot, yanking the door open harder than he has to, and closing it loudly behind him.

Dean smiles briefly at the door before turning more seriously to Cas.

“How bad?” He asks, reaching up to cup his hand behind Cas’s head, fingers trailing in the thick, soft hair. Cas lifts his hand from where it’s lying on the bed beside his thigh to place it on Dean’s shoulder, squeezing in a way that’s both comforting and seeking comfort, and Dean drops his head to one side to rest his cheek on the back of Cas’s hand. 

“It’s not bad, just painful,” Cas says. “It will pass.” 

Dean turns his head, kisses the back of Cas’s hand. “It will always pass. It doesn’t mean I like seeing you hurting.”

“I don’t have to come to see you when the battle’s been hard.”

“Yes you do. We’ve been over this.” They’ve been over it a lot, actually. Cas doesn’t get it. Dean doesn’t know how to explain it so it makes sense. Dean gets to his feet, and nudges Cas up a bit so he can sit on the bed too. “Who was it this time? Angels? Demons?” 

“Demons. Trying to earn credit with Lucifer.”

“When will they ever learn you’re a badass and they can’t mess with you?” Dean says fondly.

“Perhaps when they actually can’t mess with me,” Cas says, wincing as he shifts to lean into Dean.

“Tell me about it?” Dean prompts, because he always asks even though Cas never shares anything beyond the basic - ‘four demon’s attacked me’, ‘two of my brothers were waiting for me’, and once ‘I was kicked by a pegasus’ (that was one statement Dean sorely wanted the back story on and he didn’t get it). 

But this time Cas says, “Okay,” and Dean nearly falls off the bed in pleased surprise. However, instead of falling off the bed (because that would be embarrassing) he gets on his knees on the mattress, and starts making Cas more comfortable by taking his coat and jacket off.

“Shoot,” he invites, and grins when he sees Cas’s face go through the emotions of trying to work out what Dean might mean by that word in this context. 

Cas talks while Dean finishes taking off Cas’s coats and then he coaxes him to the top of the bed so they can lie down, Cas on his left side, the side that’s not bothering him, and Dean behind him, Cas’s back against Dean’s chest. Dean places his arm to hang loose over Cas’s upper arm and his hand sits lightly against the front of Cas’s shirt, idly fiddling with one of the buttons. Dean wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what Cas said about the demon attack if they were to ask later, except how it felt as the deep timbre of Cas’s voice vibrated through his back against Dean’s chest as he talked.

Cas’s pain and discomfort does pass over the course of the next thirty minutes as it always does. Cas becomes more animated when he talks, and less stiff in his movements as he occasionally rearranges himself where he lies against Dean.

Dean definitely knows Cas is feeling better when his ass is pushed back into Dean’s crotch.

“Were you listening to me?” Cas asks.

“Of course,” Dean lies, and tries to remember what Cas has just said and if it’s going to be obvious he’s lying. “I like hearing you talk about your stuff.” Which is not a lie. He leans in to kiss Castiel on the back of his neck, just above his collar, which is in the way, and Dean should do something about that. “I’ve got until noon. How long can you stay?” he asks, undoing the button he was playing with to slip his hand in to Cas’s shirt and slide his palm along the firm planes of Cas’s chest.

Cas rolls his hips. 

“Fucker,” Dean groans. Dean feels a rumble of amusement, not quite a laugh, in Cas’s chest.

“I can stay until noon,” Cas says. “If you think you’re up to that.”

“Cocky son-of-a-bitch when you’re not all beaten up, aren’t you.” Dean nips the back of Cas’s neck.

Cas makes signs he’s going to turn around, but Dean holds him there, and he and Cas both pretend that Dean actually has a say in the matter. 

“We’ll see how cocky you are in half an hour,” Dean says, squeezing one of Cas’s nipples between his forefinger and his thumb. Cas’s breath hitches, and Dean counts that as a win. 

He starts the process of turning Cas into a quivering mass of sexed-out angel at the top, his fingers carding up through Cas’s hair, then bending slightly at his knuckles to drag blunt fingertips along Cas’s scalp as he brings his hand back down. He does this a few times until Cas shudders and leans up into the touch, and then he stops. He’s rewarded by an exasperated huff.

Smiling, he kisses Cas’s ear, his jaw, his nape, nuzzles his nose into Cas’s hair as he slips the knot on Cas’s tie, pulling it slowly through Cas’s collar, and tossing it on the floor when it’s free. Cas’s fingers are bunched into fists grabbing at the bed covers, and Dean, taking no pity, peels Cas’s fingers from the bunched material, one at a time until they’re splayed on the bed, and Cas is twitching in his desperate need to grasp something. 

“Just lie there and take it like a man,” Dean coos into Cas’s ear.

Cas growls “I’m not a man,” in his ‘I am an angel of the lord and I will smite you’ voice, and Dean ducks his head to Cas’s shoulder to hide his laughter, because when Cas does that when he’s fighting demons it’s frigging scary, but when he does it when he’s the little spoon, it’s just ridiculous - it’s like a kitten threatening to maul you.

But then Cas growls in an altogether different way, and Dean’s hand remembers it has something it should be doing. He undoes the first closed button he comes to at the neck of Cas’s shirt. He scrapes a blunt thumbnail along Cas’s collar-bone. Cas starts breathing faster, and Dean wants to feel that so he moves his hand to Cas’s face, drags a fingertip along Cas’s bottom lip, let’s Cas’s breath make his fingers damp and warm. 

Cas darts his tongue out to lick Dean’s finger, then curls his tongue so it practically wraps itself around the digit to the first knuckle before pulling the finger in to his mouth, fastening his lips around it and sucking hard, his tongue rolling around the tip like it’s Dean’s dick he has in there. Dean gasps in surprise and he instinctively thrusts his hips forward. His cock grinds hard against Cas’s ass, and Cas grunts in smug satisfaction.

“Not fair,” Dean mutters. 

Retrieving his hand reluctantly, Dean struggles his way through the rest of Cas’s buttons when his fingers refuse to cooperate as Cas keeps moving against him. Eventually though he has all the buttons open and he pushes the cotton away, sliding his hand over Cas’s bare skin and muscle, and if he does this just right… Cas jerks away from his hand. Yep, there’s that ticklish spot.

“Dean - stop,” Cas practically whines.

“Make me?” Dean says, sucking on an earlobe.

Dean pulls at the collar of Cas’s shirt and Cas moves his arm back so Dean can maneuver him out of his sleeves, and of course Cas takes the opportunity to grope of Dean’s ass while he’s in the general area.

“Hey!” Dean says, biting down on the muscle of Cas’s newly exposed shoulder. 

Cas pushes his hips back in retaliation, and Dean moans involuntarily deep in his throat. He suspects his initial plan to reduce Cas to a gibbering sexed-out ruin while he remains firmly in control might be flawed.

Dean chucks Cas’s shirt onto the floor with his coat, and jacket. He undoes Cas’s pants, slips his hand inside over Cas’s underwear, rubs the heel of his hand against Cas’s erection and he’s rewarded by a long drawn out growl of approval, and Cas thrusting his hips hard into Dean’s hand pushing himself against, and in to Dean’s palm. Dean strokes a finger along the ridge of Cas’s cock, and Cas’s cock jerks up to meet Dean’s finger, Cas moaning as Dean strokes his finger up and down the length of him again, and again.

Dean kisses him on the neck, murmurs, “hold that thought.” He pulls back to take off his own shirt, and shuffle out of his jeans and boxers. He flings his clothes onto the growing pile on the floor, and moves back in so he’s skin to skin against Cas’s back, and his dick is leaving little stains of pre-cum on the back of Castiel’s pants. 

For no reason except ‘because’, he grins against Cas’s back, breathing warm puffs of air that he feels bounce back to ghost against his own face.

“What are you smiling at?” Cas asks, aiming for nonchalance, but the staccato way in which the words are forced through open lips, and breathy sighs gives him away as verging on desperate.

“You. Me. Everything. Nothing,” says Dean.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Cas moans.

“It’s not supposed to,” Dean says, as he slips his hand into Cas’s boxers and around his cock in one smooth, fast action that takes Cas by surprise, and has him whipping his head back as his hips arch forward. Dean only just avoids being head-butted by that hard skull.

“Not so cocky now, are you?” he smirks. He tugs at the waist of Cas’s pants. “Off.”

Cas obliges, and Dean still hasn’t worked out if he’s a natural wriggler who just accidentally manages to nudge Dean’s cock in a variety of interesting ways when he’s doing this, or if he does it on purpose. Whichever it is, when he’s kicked his pants and underwear to the floor, Cas pushes back into Dean, hooks his ankle around the back of Dean’s leg, and pulls him as close as it is physically possible to get, and that is definitely deliberate, Dean’s cock lying squeezed hard between his stomach and Cas’s ass-cheek. It makes Dean think of other places he might want his cock to be squeezed hard between, but he thinks they should probably talk about that when they’re both semi-coherent and not drugged on lust, so he moves back so his cock is in absolutely no danger of accidentally slipping into the crack in Cas’s butt.

He puts his hand on Cas’s hip and rolls him towards him. Cas’s baby-blues stare up at him as always, the iris a thin sliver around blown pupils. Cas reaches towards him, and Dean gives a warning glare so he drops his hands to his sides and they start to make fists again in the blankets. Dean lets him this time as he shuffles to his knees and leans forward and over him. 

He drops his head so he can touch Cas with his tongue, flicks the tip across the hard bud of Cas’s nipple.

“Dean,” Cas gasps, then, “Dean, Dean, Dean,” as Dean nibbles his way down his ribcage, scratches of teeth followed by soothing licks, all the way down his chest, one rib at a time. 

Dean twirls his tongue in Cas’s belly button. He nudges Cas’s belly with his nose and follows the little line of hair that tracks from his navel to the dark curls of his pubic hair. When he reaches the tip of Cas’s penis twitching and begging to be touched, Dean licks up, over the head, down the hard line to Cas’s balls, hears Cas starting to talk in Enochian, always a sure sign he’s completely fucked-out. Dean sucks one of Cas’s balls into his mouth, rolls the testicle around over his tongue, and in his cheek, up to his palate, lets it out slowly before open-mouthing his way up Cas’s cock again.

Cas mutters something in a language Dean doesn’t recognize, and his hips are making a lot of little jerky movements but he’s doing an amazing job of not just thrusting his dick in Dean’s face. Dean thinks that deserves a reward. He kisses the head of Cas’s cock, swipes his tongue across the slit, runs his tongue around his lips to wet them, and then slips his mouth down over Cas’s cock until he feels the head nudge the back of his throat. He does have to hold Cas down then, his whole body threatening to arch up off the bed from shoulder to feet as he tries to get more.

Dean slides Cas back out again, leaving just the head of his cock between his lips, then sinks back down quickly and this time he swallows before his gag reflex can engage. He knows the theory of this, but he’s never done it before. He just had a sudden urge to take all of Cas in as far as he could, so he did. It’s not easy and it’s not that comfortable, but when Cas literally chokes out a scream, Dean knows it was worth it. He does it again, and this time, Cas’s hands shoot up, uncontrolled to Dean’s head and Dean lets him, because when Cas is like this, Dean just wants to give, and give, and give. 

Cas is twisting, and clutching, and little cries of “Dean” are breathed out with every gasp. Dean’s own body is waiting to be touched and pandered to and he gives in, his hand goes to his own cock and he starts pumping. Dean swallows Cas down again, stroking himself as he does, his hand getting faster. 

He twists his hand on his cock, stroking harder and faster, three or four pumps to each swallow. Cas is trying to keep his hips flat on the bed but he’s writhing, rolling his shoulders from side to side, his head alternating between thrown back, and raised to look at Dean and Dean’s mouth working his cock.

Dean’s hand rhythm becomes irregular, heat is coiled low in his belly, he feels it in the base of his spine, he’s so close, so close, but so is Cas. He goes down, swallows, and then Cas is spurting into his mouth, his cock pulsing as it releases against Dean’s palate. Cas is shouting in about ten different languages, vocal cords strained almost beyond recognition, and Dean slips him out of his mouth, takes him in his other hand to stroke him through his orgasm, then Dean’s gone too, hot, sticky semen shooting out of his cock to mix with Cas’s on his chest and stomach, vision whiting out, the hard beat of his cock in his hand almost painful in the intensity of his pleasure. He leans in, swallows Cas’s yells with a kiss that is sloppy but heartfelt.

“Fuck,” Dean gasps, leaning back to stare at Cas.

“Indeed,” Cas replies, panting breathlessly, staring back at Dean. His hair is all over the place, his face and neck flushed, his eyes still dark, his bottom lip is red where he’s been biting it. He looks beautiful. Cas reaches a shaking hand up to Dean’s cheek, runs a thumb along Dean’s cheekbone, then slides his hand down to Dean’s shoulder, encouraging Dean down to lie with him. Dean drapes himself over the warmth of Cas, buries his head in his shoulder.

“How much time do you need?” Cas asks after a few minutes when he can get the words out.

“For what?” Dean asks.

“To recover. We have three hours left.”

Dean lifts his head, glares out-of-focus at Cas, drops his head again. “Cocky bastard,” he mutters.


	16. Doing Something Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas thinks Dean needs something better to remember him by than a few strands of hair.

They don’t in the end have sex again during the time they have left before Dean has to meet Sam and Cas leaves. It’s not that neither of them gets physically interested, it’s just that it doesn’t happen. Dean’s never been with anyone before where the other stuff becomes equally or more important than the sex stuff. In this case, the other stuff hasn’t consisted of much more than lying naked together talking about how to slay seemingly indestructible supernatural creatures, which is probably considered kinky by some people, but is strangely their life.

Half an hour before their time’s up, Dean’s phone beeps. He rolls away from Cas to pluck the phone from the nightstand, unlocking the screen as he rolls back again. 

“Sam?”

“Yeah. Apparently we’ve got thirty minutes before he shows up and we’re not allowed to still be naked.” Dean drops the phone on the mattress and kisses Cas’s mouth when Cas turns his head towards Dean, which is a pleasant surprise as he’d been aiming for Cas’s ear.

Cas kisses back, then himself rolls away, gets off the bed and walks around collecting clothes from the floor, draping them over his arm as he goes. Dean doesn’t even pretend not to look as Cas bends over to pick things up showing off the well-formed muscles of his ass.

“You’re looking at my behind again.”

“I’m allowed. It might be the last time I see it.” Dean doesn’t know what made him say that. The words were out of his mouth before his brain engaged. They don’t talk about that possibility. Ever. Cas’s momentary pause in what he’s doing might go unnoticed by anyone else. “Until tomorrow,” Dean adds lamely.

“Dean… “ Cas starts, but Dean doesn’t let him finish. 

He laughs - tries to ignore it. “You’d better cover that fine piece of behind up soon or Sam’ll get more than he bargained for.” He strokes his cock suggestively.

Cas looks at him, not fooled in the least, but he goes back to picking up the clothes without saying anything. He walks over to the final pile, picks up their shirts, his coat and jacket and starts back towards the bed.

Cas’s phone drops out of his pocket and he bends to pick it up. When he does the clothes shift and a dark sock, one of Dean’s, falls to the floor. Cas huffs in what Dean assumes is frustration at the impertinence of inanimate objects to intentionally make Cas’s life difficult. Dean smiles. When Cas picks the sock up, other things drop. Dean outright laughs this time and Cas looks at him in annoyance. Cas dumps what he has still in his arms onto the foot of the bed, then he bends down to pick up the latest escapees, and when he stands back up, he stops and stares hard at one of the items.

“Dean?” he says curiously, but there’s an element of concern thrown in as well.

If Dean didn’t know he didn’t have anything in his clothes that Cas wasn’t supposed to see, he’d be worried. Cas has one of those looks on his face that spouses on TV get when they find lipstick stains on shirt collars, or motel receipts in suit pockets. Dean doesn’t have anything like that, for obvious reasons. Except of course he’s naturally worried because Cas seems to be.

He sits upright on the bed. “What is it?”

Cas holds up what he’s looking at so Dean can see it too. It’s a tiny plastic bag with three dark hairs inside. “This is my hair.”

Fuck. Dean hadn’t exactly forgotten it was in his shirt pocket, given he never goes anywhere without the packet, and he’s taken to patting it at appropriate times as some kind of good luck charm, but he had kind of forgotten that other people might find it a bit creepy. 

“Um, Yeah,” he says, because he can hardly deny it, it’s right there in Cas’s hand.

Cas stares at him. “I thought you were joking.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In Bobby’s workshop. I thought you were joking about wanting something to remind you of me if I died.”

Dean sighs. He might as well come clean. There’s no point in lying to Cas, Cas knows him too well. 

“I was joking,” he says, “At first. But then I realized that I really didn’t have anything, that you could leave, or die, or just not come back one day, and I’d have nothing to show you were ever real.” He gets up from the bed, steps forward and wraps his arms around Cas’s waist. “I’d have nothing to show that there was once someone here, a man that I loved. So it’s kind of cheesy, but believe it or not, it actually helps me that I have this when you’re gone for the day to I don’t know where, doing I don’t know what, facing all sorts of evil or holy mother-fuckers on your own.” He stands up straighter. “So, I’m not ashamed.” He grins, sheepishly. “Well, okay, I am actually kind of embarrassed.” Cas isn’t smiling which isn’t helping him feel less embarrassed, and he’s starting to worry that he’s crossed some kind of barrier or breached some kind of angel/vessel code.

“You should have something better than this,” Cas says. He sounds very determined, and Dean starts to panic and he hopes Cas doesn’t think that the giving and receiving of body parts is normal for human romances, because Dean doesn’t even want to - 

“Sam told me you want a ring,” Cas said.

“What?” Dean exclaims. That’s just… no… how… what… Sam? Fuck. “No, of course not, why would I, that’s ridiculous.”

“He said, when we were away getting the armor, that he was teasing you but that you - “

“No, seriously Cas, I don’t want a ring. Or anything. Really. I’ll throw the hair away, I promise.” Dean holds his hand out for the packet. Cas stares at Dean’s hand, then back to Dean’s face, before leaning in and kissing him.

“Come with me.”

“What, now? Sam’ll be here soon.”

“Can the hunt wait?”

“I suppose, it’s only a ghost and it hasn’t killed anyone yet. But Cas, just drop it, will you? It’s not important.“

“It’s important to me,” Cas says.

Dean throws his hands up in the air. “Fine.”

Cas lifts two fingers. 

“Uh, Cas?”

“Yes?”

“Are we going to need clothes where we’re going?”

#

“Where the hell are we?” Dean (fully clothed) asks, turning on the spot to look at the horizon in every direction, and not seeing much but parched land, rock and the occasional weird-looking tree.

“South Africa,” Cas answers, not looking at Dean, but looking around him, and sniffing the air.

“And why are we in South Africa?”

“Diamonds.”

“Oh, no. Not diamonds. Diamonds are for girls.”

“These won’t be.”

Cas starts walking west Dean decides based on the sun but then remembers he’s upside down world-wise, so it’s probably East. Dean catches up with Cas. Cas stops and sniffs. 

“Here.” Then he disappears. He’s back thirty seconds later, with two dirty blue rocks in his hands. “Pick,” he says, holding out his hands, palm up, one rock in each palm.

Dean’s not sure what he’s picking. To be honest he’s a little thrown by the sudden shift from lying naked in a cheap motel room in America to staring at rocks on a plain in South Africa. “What am I picking for?”

“Which of these diamonds do you like the best?” 

“Those are frigging diamonds? They’re huge! And they’re blue. And I’m not wearing a diamond ring.”

“Do you trust me?” Cas asks.

“Of course I do,” Dean says exasperated.

“Then pick.” 

What if this turns out to be a little diamond cluster on a gold band or something? He just wants something plain, simple. Cas is going to be pissed when he refuses to wear the ring. 

“The one on the left.”

“Your left or my left?”

“My left.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Dean asks, getting more and more confused.

“Why did you pick that one?”

Dean hadn’t consciously, he’d just looked at them, and… “It’s the same color tone as your eyes,” he says, without thinking, looking up and feeling like a complete sap. “Lighter, but the same blue. I dunno… seriously Cas, Sam’s gonna laugh at me.”

Cas smiles. “I don’t care.”

“You frigging wouldn’t. It’s not you he’s going to laugh at.”

“He might,” says Cas. He hands Dean the other diamond, the one Dean didn’t pick, then he wraps his hand around Dean’s chosen diamond, and closes his eyes. Little bits of white light leak worryingly through Cas’s eyelids, the knuckles on his hands are white where he’s squeezing the gemstone tight, his brow is creased in little furrows.

“Take my hand,” Cas says, “put your hand around my fist.”

Dean does. Cas puts his other hand around Dean’s. They stay there like that for two minutes. Dean feels strange; nothing he can put his finger on, and nothing particularly worrying, but just not quite normal. Then the light behind Cas’s eyelids dims, and Cas stumbles. Dean grabs his arm.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Cas says, smiling. “Just a little worn out.” Cas is looking a little too pleased with himself. Dean eyes him suspiciously. “I wasn’t certain I’d have the power to do this,” he clarifies, and he opens his hand. Dean looks into Cas’s palm. 

Two rings sit there. Two simple, pale blue, perfect, flawless, narrow diamond bands. One has a slightly larger circumference than the other, and Cas picks this one up as Dean stares, open-mouthed in awe. 

“It will fit either of your two middle fingers of either hand,” Cas says. He turns Dean’s hand face up and drops it into his palm. Cas takes the second ring, and puts it on the forefinger of his left hand. “This one is for me. They are a pair.”

Dean stares at his own ring in his palm.

“Is something wrong?” Cas asks, his apprehension plain.

“Fuck, no,” Dean says quietly. “I’m just a little overwhelmed to be honest.” Dean looks up at Cas. “And frigging impressed,” he says honestly. “You did this.”

“We did it actually. Put it on.”

Dean puts it on the third finger of his left hand, because he knows it’s going to feel wrong anywhere else. His finger tingles and he thinks he sees something in the band. “Did that just - “

“Glow. Yes. There’s a tiny sliver of my grace in each band, along with a tiny piece of your soul - don’t worry,” Cas adds quickly, “I didn’t take anything I didn’t already have.”

“Sam is definitely going to laugh at us,” Dean says grinning because, yeah this is definitely better than a few hairs. Only there’s one thing. Dean takes Cas’s hand and slides the ring off Cas’s forefinger. Cas looks puzzled but then understanding dawns when Dean slides it back onto Cas’s third finger. “If we’re going to get laughed at we might as well get laughed at for the whole shebang,” Dean says.


	17. Formal Wear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lead on the manticore, and Sam finds out about the rings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This really has nothing to do with the prompt. Except for the last word.

Sam’s sulking and Dean’s pissed. 

Sam’s sulking because Dean wasn’t at the motel when he turned up to go ghost hunting at midday. Dean’s pissed because even though he’s embarrassed about the rings, he’s actually pretty happy about the rings and he’d wanted to tell Sam, but there’s no way he’s going to tell him while he’s sulking. Sam could probably spot the ring if he looked hard enough but he’s been ignoring Dean for five hours, so he hasn’t yet. 

All in all, the Impala is not a happy place to be right at this moment. It’s a relief when Sam’s phone rings.

“Hello.”

“Who is it?” Dean asks.

“Bobby.”

Sam listens for a few seconds, then sits up straighter in his seat. “You sure?”

“What’s going on?” Dean asks, flicking his eyes briefly sideways. Sam waves him to silence while he keeps his phone to his ear.

“Okay, Bobby, we’re on it. Thanks.” Sam turns to Dean, “We’ve got a location for the manticore. It killed someone last night in the grounds of a five star hotel fifty miles from here. The hotel’s calling it a freak animal attack, and keeping its doors open. They’ve got guys with guns patrolling the grounds to make the guests feel safe.” Sam pauses. “You’ve got to call Cas,” he says carefully.

Dean knows he has to call Cas. They need him, it’s just… he glances at the ring on his finger.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, I know. We’ll call him when we get there. I don’t want him getting there ahead of us and trying stuff on his own.”

“We’ve got all the armor,” Sam points out. “I don’t think he would.”

When Dean says, “Not risking it,” Sam thankfully lets it lie.

#

True to his word, Dean calls Cas when they get to the hotel, even though part of him hopes Cas is busy and doesn’t turn up, but unfortunately Cas shows up straight away. Dean plays with the ring on his finger, and he and Cas stare at each other until Sam throws his hands up, and mutters, “you only saw each other six hours ago for God’s sake.”

Their plan is to do their own ground patrols to look for signs of where the manticore might be hanging out but that proves a lot more difficult than they expected.

The hotel must have recruited every single deer, bear and racoon hunter for miles around. The grounds are crawling with them, and it’s not just that they’re almost certain to be seen, it’s that they’re in serious danger of being shot by trigger-happy amateurs.

They need a plan B.

Dean and Cas don’t like plan B.

“Well someone has to stay on the outside,” Sam reasons, “and you two are… well, you’re sickeningly inseparable, so you see why it has to be you that checks into the hotel.”

“I don’t want you out here on your own, Sam. It’s not safe.”

“It’s probably safer out here than in there,” Sam says.

“So Cas is in the firing line, is that what you’re saying?”

“And you are also in the firing line, Dean,” Cas says. “I’m no happier about splitting up from Sam than you are, and I’m definitely not happy about you being inside that hotel.” He takes Dean’s left hand and bringing it up to his face, he kisses the ring on Dean’s finger.

Okay, Dean thinks, weird and soppy, but it makes the ring on his finger glow warm which is all kinds of nice.

“You… “ Sam says, “you… “

“Sam?” Dean turns, only barely able to break his gaze with Cas.

“You got married?”

“We did not get married,” Dean says. His voice might come out a little more disgusted than he’d intended, but come on - marriage?

“I wanted to be your best man,” Sam says, clearly disappointed.

“We did not get married, dude.”

“I wanted to be both of your best mans, men whatever.”

“Sam, we did not get married. And is that even allowed? Can we both have the same best man?”

Dean looks at Cas for backup but he’s no help, he just looks completely confused.

“Cas has got a ring too,” Sam says in some kind of stupor.

“Sam. We. Did. Not. Get. Married.”

“You love Cas,” Sam says. As far as Dean can tell his brother’s gone into some kind of psychotic state.

“Of course I love Cas. What did you think?”

Sam stares at him. “Of course… “ Sam stares from Cas to Dean and back again. “I don’t know what I thought. I don’t know which of you to give the ‘you hurt my brother and I’ll kill you speech’ to,” he says.

“Sam… “ Dean starts. This is getting ridiculous.

“When you get married, can I be your best man?” Sam asks.

“Yes,” Cas says.

Dean glares at him. “We are not getting married.”

“Okay,” Cas says, looking as if he doesn’t care either way (Dean hopes he doesn’t care either way). “I just thought agreeing with Sam might help us move on to the hunt.”

Dean snorts a laugh, and Sam moves his eyes away from Dean’s and Cas’s rings for the first time in the last five minutes.

“Um,” says Sam.

“Sam, get over it.”

“Yeah. So you can’t check into a five-star hotel like that.”

“Why not?” Dean says, exasperated. 

“Well, you can try,” says Sam, “But I think they’ll chuck you out. You need something a little more formal.”


	18. Dancing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dinner-dance, and some witches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies again for the delay. This has proven a difficult week to find time to keep up (and I wasn't that inspired by the prompt - not that that usually stops me!)

Sam’s idea of formal turns out to be tuxes and bow-ties. Dean accused him of making it up for a joke (even Dean knows that you don’t need black-tie getup to check in to a five-star hotel), but it does turn out that there’s some kind of posh benefit dinner-dance on at the hotel tonight, and Sam had eventually conceded that he’d already known that.

Dean’s decided he doesn’t mind. Cas looks pretty good in a tux and bow-tie, and if the fact that they spent the first hour in their room getting each other out of the tux and bow-tie is any indication, Cas thinks Dean looks good in his too.

Now they’re in a room of three hundred possible witnesses and potential future victims of a manticore, they have to interview as many as they can and Cas has suddenly gone shy. The problem though is it’s Cas everyone wants to dance with. Not that Dean blames them, but Cas refuses point blank and it’s not getting the interviews done any faster.

“It’s just a frigging dance, Cas,” Dean says under his breath, getting irritated.

“I’m happy observing,” mutters Cas, pretending to look around the room and pointedly refusing to meet Dean’s eyes. “I can point out people who look nervous, you can ask them to dance and ascertain if they saw anything last night… Like that woman over there. She’s been standing by that table for fifteen minutes and is looking anxious.” 

Dean huffs a sigh and looks over to where Cas is pointing. He’s not wrong, and Dean shrugs and wanders over. The woman’s about fifty, and pleasant enough with a filthy sense of humor that has Dean laughing in surprise. Dean asks her if she wants to dance and she does so they do. Then she (Emily) politely gives Dean his out when the dance is done.

Dean walks back to Cas. “She’s anxious because she’s about to tell her husband she doesn’t love him anymore.”

Cas narrows his eyebrows. “She didn’t tell you that.”

“No. Cas she didn’t tell me that, but that’s what I deduced. In any case, she didn’t see anything last night, and that took fifteen minutes and unless you get with the program we’re going to get through a grand total of about eight witnesses this way.”

Cas has the good grace to look embarrassed, but doing the kicked puppy impression isn’t going to get them interviewing any more witnesses. Of course, what it does get is Dean some dirty looks, and Cas a new queue of potential dance partners. Cas declines them all with such good grace that every single one of them walks away happy, not disgruntled feeling rejected. Dean’s not sure how he does it considering that Cas has the social skills of a watermelon. Not that Dean’s feeling bitter at all.

“Seriously, man,” Dean says when the last woman in the line has given up, “you need to do something other than stand there. We’ve got to try and get some witnesses before it kills again. Someone’s got to have seen something.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to help, Dean, it’s just… “ Cas stops, clearly frustrated.

“Just?”

“I don’t know how to dance.”

Oh. “You’ve never danced? Ever?”

“I have tried,” Cas says, looking down at his shoes while he’s talking, “once, many years ago when I was stationed at Atlantis. I trod on my partner’s toes and ruined all hope of a prophecy coming true. I was reprimanded.” Cas looks up, earnestly, “so you understand why it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to dance with anyone.”

“Maybe your previous vessel had two left feet. You might be good with this one,” Dean suggests.

“I don’t think it’s the vessel that’s the problem. As you’ve pointed out to me before, I have no music appreciation.”

Dean laughs. “That wasn’t quite what I meant.” Dean takes Cas’s hand. “Come on,” he says, tugging Cas until Cas follows him through a double door into a quieter corridor. “Dance lessons.”

“No,” Cas says horrified.

“Yes.” Dean puts his free hand on Cas’s shoulder and places Cas’s hand on his waist. He brings their already clasped hands up to shoulder level. Cas is standing as far away from Dean as he can manage, staring at his feet again. Dean pulls him forward so their chests are only an inch away from each other. He dips his head to catch Cas’s eye, and draws Cas’s attention up to his face. They can hear the music here, and Dean starts swaying to the beat, keeping his feet still for the moment.

Cas holds himself stiffly while Dean tries to get him to move. “Just… I dunno, just move with me,” he says, inching closer to Cas so they’re touching at their chests, and their thighs, so that Cas can feel Dean’s motion. It takes a few minutes but then they’re moving together in rhythm, Cas’s forehead brushing against Dean’s occasionally.

“Now feet,” Dean murmurs, “ready?” Cas nods, and Dean shuffles a little, pushing Cas’s feet around with the sides of his own. 

A couple of middle-aged women come into the corridor and see them, but they just smile huge indulgent smiles as they walk past. Dean leans in and kisses Cas’s cheek. “See, it’s easy.”

Cas nods.

It takes them twenty minutes, then Cas is good to go as long as it’s nothing more challenging than a slow waltz. Dean watches him as he walks nervously up to one of the women who’d approached him earlier, and Dean watches her smile at Cas, and watches Cas lead the woman onto the dance floor, and he watches Cas move her around with an acceptable level of confidence. 

After the dance, Cas comes back.

“How was it?” asks Dean,smiling.

“Fine,” Cas says, sounding pleased.

“Ready to go again?”

“Yes.”

They go a lot faster with two of them, picking women that are part of a group mostly so that they cover as much gossip from as many groups as possible. It’s getting late when Cas comes up to him and takes him by the elbow, apologizing to the couple Dean is talking to and pulling Dean to one side.

“Come with me.”

Dean follows him into the same corridor as before, then Cas turns left, and then he opens the door to a small meeting room, set up board meeting style. There are three younger women in the room already. Cas closes the door behind them. 

“Phoebe, Lisa and Eloise,” Cas says, pointing at the women one at a time, “They’re witches.”

“Whoa,” Dean says, taking two steps back until his back is flat against the closed door. “What the hell?”

“They’re hunting the manticore,” Cas says.

Dean takes a moment to process that. “Why?” he asks eventually.

“One of our coven was killed last night,” the one Cas introduced as Phoebe says. “The latest in a string of witches that creature has killed over the past two months.”

“Hell, if I’d known it was killing witches I wouldn’t be trying so hard to gank it,” Dean says.

“Dean,” Cas admonishes. “You should hear them out.”

Dean’s fairly sure there was a time when life was simple. When he went out and killed werewolves and wendigoes, and climbed into bed with a sense of a job well done. He’s not sure when that changed to falling in love with an angel, and consorting with witches.

“Fine,” he says, resigned.

“We know of a spell,” Eloise says, “that will kill the manticore.”

“Of course you do,” Dean mutters. 

Eloise scowls at him. “We can’t cast it, only a human can.”

“How convenient,” Dean says. “Why?”

“It’s not specific to manticores. It will kill us too. It will kill or maim any mythological or supernatural creature.”

“That’s a pretty impressive spell. And you’re just going to hand that over to us?”

“No, and it’s not as useful as it sounds. It can only be used once every one hundred years. But we will work with you to mix the potion, and we will give you the potion to use against the manticore.”

“Figures. How long will we need? That thing might kill again tonight.”

“If we can use the angel to help us get the final ingredients, we can mix it tomorrow. It’ll be ready for tomorrow night. We’ll just need to keep all witches inside tonight.”

“Cas?” Dean checks.

“We should try it. What have we got to lose.”

“Jeez, man. don’t jinx it.”


	19. Cooking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooking up a witches brew.

Cas has gone.

He hasn’t gone far, Dean knows. Or rather, he has gone far, but he hasn’t gone far for long. Or rather… damnit. Basically, he’s not here with Dean and Dean wants him to be. 

Dean flicks to the next channel on the TV. A National Geographic program about the Amazon, and whoa… that’s a pretty impressive fish. He puts the TV remote on the nightstand. Watching normal people hunting normal things might be just what he needs.

Cas has gone both to clarify to Sam the meaning of Dean’s reactive text message of ‘Fucking witches!’, and to scour the world for some obscure ingredient needed for the manticore-killing potion. 

The witches are in their room doing weird stuff with chicken blood and cinnamon sticks, or something like that, Dean’s not sure. Okay it probably wasn’t cinnamon sticks, but it was definitely chicken blood. Dean got chucked out for being unhelpful - Phoebe had actually used a much less ladylike variety of words than ‘unhelpful’; Dean’s paraphrasing - and he’s not technically needed except right at the end when he’ll finish the potion off given it’s tendency to kill supernatural things, including witches. 

So Dean’s bored and he’s missing Cas. He twirls the ring on his finger, watching as it does that little flickery thing that’s Cas’s grace and his soul getting it on in the diamond. He loves Cas. He loves him so much it aches when he’s there and it aches when he isn’t. 

God, when did he get so pathetic?

He grabs the remote, mutes the TV, rubs himself through his jeans with the heel of his hands. He closes his eyes, thinks of a familiar blue-eyed stare, a lean and muscled body, strong thighs, angular hips, stubble, gorgeous inches of smooth, pink skin stretched tight over a twitching erection. He groans, undoes his zipper, shuffles his jeans and underwear down his hips, pulling his hardening dick out of his pants. He grips and strokes himself, slowly at first, then faster, giving a twist at the top. He slides his thumb over the slit, wiping pre-cum around the head. He lifts his shirt away from his stomach, dips his chin and opens his eyes to watch as he jerks himself off, tries to imagine it’s Cas’s hand around his dick. His hand gets faster, and he pants and groans uninhibitedly in the empty room.

There’s a gust of wind.

“Hello, Dean… oh.”

Dean looks up, “Watch me,” he says in a rush. He locks eyes with Cas and immediately he’s coming with a moan of Cas’s name on his lips, and hot semen spurting out, splashing on his stomach, pooling in his navel, dripping over his knuckles, over the ring. “Fuck,” he says through a long exhale. “Dude, you have amazing timing.”

Cas smiles, picks up the box of tissues from the vanity unit, takes them to Dean and proceeds to start mopping him up, which Dean decides is actually also kind of hot.

“You get what we needed?” Dean asks as he watches avidly while Cas finishes wiping Dean’s cum from his softening penis.

“Yes.” Cas shuffles a little uncomfortably in his seat on the side of the bed, and Dean grins at him. He knows where that’s coming from.

“So the witches are making up the potion?”

“Yes. It has to be completed in daylight. They’ll be ready for us to put in the final ingredient at dawn.” Cas throws the dirty tissue into the room’s waste basket. 

“There’s no ‘us’, Cas. They said it has to be a human, remember?”

“I don’t think it will be harmful to me. It takes a lot to injure or kill an angel.”

Dean looks at Cas, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. “You’re not a full angel anymore, though. And they said any supernatural creature. It’s not worth the risk.”

“I will take the risk.”

“I won’t.” Dean leans in to press his lips gently against Cas’s.

#

Cas won. 

Dean really wants to know how the hell he managed to persuade him - he just knows it happened somewhere between the kissing and Dean waking up half an hour before dawn to find Cas still there, in their bed, lying naked against him, eyes open watching Dean sleep. 

They’re in the witches hotel suite, the witches themselves having relocated to Dean and Cas’s room. The pot is a literal witches cauldron just like in kids books, sitting on a small gas camping stove, too small to set off the smoke alarms in the room. This should be easy, just adding one final ingredient to the pot, but it’s not of course because this is their life. 

“I need three frigging hands for this,” Dean exclaims in despair after attempting to clip armadillo nails (without the whole armadillo attached thankfully) into the pot and stir at the same time. 

“Let me stir,” Cas says from where Dean’s banished him to stand behind the couch.

“No. They said you shouldn’t risk splashing yourself with the stuff just in case, and even though they’re witches and I don’t believe a word they say by default, I’m gonna go with that one.”

Cas huffs in annoyance. “Then let me clip the nails. I can do it from standing over the pot so that I don’t have to get near the contents. You can stir.”

Dean doesn’t like it. But what choice does he have. “Fine. But be careful… and don’t think I didn’t see you roll your eyes just then.”

Cas walks over to join Dean by the pot. As Cas takes the armadillo toes, and the nail clippers out of Dean’s hands, their fingers brush lightly then linger briefly. It’s calming. Dean breathes.

“Okay.” He starts to stir. Cas clips. Dean mutters the short incantation the witches taught him. The mixture in the cauldron sparks a little. 

“God that stinks,” Dean mutters, holding his free hand up to cover his nose and mouth.

“Indeed,” Cas says sounding strained, and when Dean glances up at him he’s wrinkling his nose up in displeasure. 

“You okay?”

“Yes, it’s just as you said - it is an unpleasant odor.”

Dean looks back down and keeps stirring.

“That’s the last one,” Cas says, gasping as if he’s been holding his breath, and he takes three rapid steps back.

Dean lets go of the ladle he’s been stirring with, and joins Cas, dropping his arm away from his face when he’s far enough away from the potion. 

“We’re killing the manticore with a stink bomb,” he says. “That has got to be one of the foulest things I have ever smelt.” He leans forward, on tiptoes to peer into the top of the cauldron from the furthest possible distance. “It isn’t doing anything except smelling. Is it done?”

“What color is it?” Castiel asks. 

“A kind of gunky fluorescent green.”

“Then by my understanding, it’s done.”

“Dude, next time we cook something together - we’re doing burgers.”

Cas nods in keen agreement, then he coughs. Dean’s just about to tell him to cover his mouth with his hand next time, he’s even got his mouth open to do so, when it hits him. Cas coughed. It hits him at about the same time it hits Cas. Dean opens his eyes wide, sharply focusing on Cas, who looks vaguely worried.

“Man, what the hell?”


	20. In battle, side-by-side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas has a cough, they battle the manticore, and Dean forgets something very important (frigging witches).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're always battling side-by-side so in this one they kind of don't. Just for a change, and bugger the prompts :o)

Twenty hours later, Cas is still coughing occasionally and Dean’s worried. The witches aren’t being any help at all - there’s lots of shrugging, and ‘you can’t say we didn’t warn you’ - but they’ve made it very clear this is a one-off collaboration to rid them all of the threat of the manticore and now the potion is made up and ready to go, they don’t actually give a shit what happens to Cas. 

“You okay?” Dean asks him, wiping the palms of his hands on the knees of his jeans and leaning away from Cas so he can look at him better.

Cas turns his head to stare at him, huffing in irritation. “For the fourth time in the past thirty minutes, I don’t think it’s getting any worse.”

“You don’t think?” Dean checks anxiously. “That’s not instilling me with confidence.”

Cas reaches over to take Dean’s hand. “Dean… please stop worrying. I’ll tell you if I think there’s a problem.” Cas coughs. 

Yeah, really instilling him with confidence. “Promise?”

“Yes,” Cas answers. His face is completely expressionless and Dean can’t tell if he means it. 

Dean realizes he’s not going to get a different answer however much he pesters. Sighing, he turns away to look across the nine hole golf course that is where they plan on trapping the manticore. The wooden bench they’re sitting on has made his butt numb and he clenches and unclenches his ass-cheeks to try and get some feeling back. 

They’re ready, and have been since eleven. They’ve baited the trap with a witch. Eloise has been stuck in the maintenance shed on the edge of the golf course for two hours now. Dean hopes it’s cold and uncomfortable; his sympathy threshold for witches is at an all time low.

Three bottles of potion are sitting on the ground by their feet. Dean had made Cas stay away while he ladled the potion carefully into four half-liter glass bottles, carefully sealing the tops with plastic stoppers, then with wax. He’d washed the residue off the glass more thoroughly than he’s washed anything before in his life, then he’d changed his clothes, then he’d showered and he’d scrubbed until his skin felt raw. Cas isn’t going to come into contact with any more of the potion, and the only reason Dean’s conceded to him being here now is to help Dean get as close as possible to the manticore before leaving Dean to throw the bottle of potion, which in theory will smash and Dean assumes the smell will kill the manticore, because no-one seems to know what else the potion might do.

They should only need one bottle for the manticore, Sam has one for backup, and Dean’s sure he can think up something to do with the remaining bottles if the potion really does what it’s supposed to do. Assuming he lives. Also assuming he lives, he’s going to gank the hell out of the three witches when they’re done. He thinks they probably worked that out on the first night, but he doesn’t really care if they know or not, the same way they don’t care what happens to Cas. 

Dean fidgets in his armor, running a finger under the edge of the breastplate. “I’ve got an itch.”

“Scratch it,” Cas says, staring out over the golf course, not at Dean.

“I can’t reach.”

Cas stands up suddenly, peering into the distance. Dean stands up beside him. “You see it?”

“I think so… wait… yes, there,” Cas says, pointing to the tree line, well over on the right and near the back at the farthest point of the course, just to the side of one of the greens. The manticore is coming from a different direction than they expected. It’s not going to cut past Dean on its way to the shed where Eloise is hiding out anywhere close enough for Dean to throw one of the bottles at it. 

“I’ll be back,” Cas says and is gone before Dean can say anything in reply.

Cas appears in front of, and to one side of the manticore. They’re some distance away, but Dean can see Cas’s armor glinting in the moonlight, and for all that he looks ridiculous, Dean’s glad he’s wearing it. Cas teases the creature, coaxing it towards him. It shoots a dart towards him from its tail but Cas disappears just before the dart hits. The manticore swings its head from side to side looking for him. Cas reappears a moment later, still a way-away but closer to Dean. The creature is wary, but is moving towards Cas, looking around all the time, presumably suspecting a trap. When the manticore is within pouncing range of Cas, which to Dean’s mind is too frigging close, Cas disappears again. This time he reappears right next to Dean.

Dean puts a hand on Cas’s shoulder, but he’s looking at the manticore which has spotted them and is heading their way. “Okay, this is it.” Dean hefts one of the bottles of potion. “You need to go.”

“Be careful.”

“Go!” Dean yells. The manticore is picking up speed. Cas goes. The creature looks around to see where Cas has gone, but then decides to keep charging towards Dean. It fixes Dean with a determined stare, and picks up speed. Dean stands his ground. He can’t decide if this is stupid or brave. When the manticore is almost within range of his throwing arm, he heaves the bottle towards it, throwing it overarm, aiming for where the manticore will be by the time the bottle lands. 

There’s a crack of breaking glass as the bottle hits the manticore in the shoulder, then a brief spark of fluorescent green, then a ball of wispy, green smoke creates a mini-tornado around the creature’s body, enveloping it. The manticore stops, looks confused and afraid, then there’s a bang and the thing explodes, body parts splattering everywhere. The wispy, green tornado expands to encompass the range of the effects of the explosion. Dean ducks, throws himself onto the ground and the tornado passes over him, wind picking at his clothes and his hair. He risks raising his head and looking up. The tornado is sweeping up all the manticore body parts from where they are scattered, sucking them up into a narrowing funnel that rises into the air above the fourth hole of the golf course. The ground level wind dies down and the funnel starts rising faster and faster upwards into the atmosphere. Suddenly it simply isn’t there any more.

Dean gets to his feet quickly, still staring up at where the tornado was but there’s nothing to see. There’s a sound to his right and he turns. About ten meters away from him three women are standing together in a huddle, looking nervous.

“Nothing to worry about,” he says in his most confident dealing-with-witnesses voice. “Freak tornado.”

The women look from one to the other, then they start smiling. Only it’s not just a relieved smile, there’s something mischievous and secret in it too. Dean begins to suspect he might be missing something.

“What are you doing out here?” Dean asks, suspicion making his skin crawl.

Before they get a chance to answer, Sam suddenly appears out of nowhere, with some tax-accountant looking dude in a trenchcoat, and before Dean’s had a chance to process the fact that they just appeared out of thin air, Sam strides up, and wraps his arms around Dean in a hug. “Glad you made it man.”

Then the tax-accountant-dude comes up to him and tries to do the same thing. Dean leaps back. “Whoa… do you mind? I don’t know you man.” The guy looks at him, eyes narrowing, perplexed and, if Dean didn’t know better, hurt by Dean’s reaction. Sam puts a hand on tax-accountant-dude’s shoulder, and Sam’s eyebrows disappear into his fringe. Admittedly they don’t have far to go. 

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” one of the women says, eyes opening wide in surprise.

“What did you do?” tax-accountant-dude asks, shaking off Sam’s hand and stalking up to the women. 

“It wasn’t supposed to do that,” the taller woman on the right says, taking a step back. Dean thinks he’d take a step back too. Tax-accountant-dude looks pretty damn scary like that for a nerdy-looking dude. “We were only trying to protect ourselves. We added something to the potion. He would have tried to kill us. He was only supposed to forget us, not you too.”

“Undo it,” tax-accountant-dude growls.

“Cas, what’s going on?” Sam hisses, eyes flicking between ‘Cas’ and Dean. Sam obviously knows tax-accountant-dude pretty well, so Dean isn’t sure why he doesn’t. Sam goes and grabs the guy by his bicep, and says something into his ear that Dean doesn’t hear. 

“These are the witches,” Cas says. He’s obviously pretty angry. But if those three women are witches Dean can get behind that. “Undo it,” Cas says, and now he sounds both angry and upset.

Dean has no frigging idea what’s going on, but somehow he knows it has something to do with him. And witches. Witches that have probably done something to him. He’s not happy.

“We can’t,” the middle woman - witch - says. All three of them are backing away nervously now as Sam and Cas advance on them. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. We can’t undo it.”

The three women link arms. The one on the right pulls a pouch out of a pocket. Sam makes a leap forward to try and grab an arm, or a piece of clothing, but he’s too late. The dust from the pouch is emptied over the three women and they disappear.

“Fuck,” says Sam. And okay, but Sam doesn’t swear much so whatever’s happened must be pretty bad. 

Sam looks at Cas. Cas looks at Dean. Dean switches between the two of them, trying to work it out. Sam looks worried, but he’s looking at Cas as if he’s more worried about Cas than he is about Dean. Cas looks sad, shoulders slumped, playing with an unusual-looking ring on his left hand.

“Sam, are you going to tell me what the hell’s going on?” Dean asks, because everyone except him seems to know, and it’s about time someone told him.

Cas coughs, an unhealthy, sick sound. 

“Dude, cover your mouth if you’re going to cough over my little brother,” Dean says, perhaps a little harshly but he doesn’t want Sammy to catch something from the tax-accountant-dude. The guy manages to look even sadder, takes a step back and turns away. Sam lifts his arm with the obvious intention of placing a comforting hand on Cas’s back, which seems a little unnecessary - Dean didn’t think he was that rude; the guy should grow some balls if he can’t take a little bit of criticism without sulking. But then Cas disappears. Dean blinks. Sam wipes a hand over his face. “Damnit, Cas.”


	21. Bathing Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean doesn't remember, Cas's cough is getting worse, and they hunt a water sprite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cas and Dean end up in the water together. As far as I'm concerned that meets the prompt :o)

Sam’s been behaving strangely the whole day since Dean killed the manticore. He keeps going outside and yelling at the sky. The yelling consists of calls for this Cas friend of his to come back, and Dean’s not going to lie - he’s a lot confused about this Cas character and his brother’s relationship to him. 

He’s a lot confused about his own relationship to this Cas character to be honest.

He gets that he’s supposed to know him, he gets that the witches did something that made him forget. He even gets that the guy’s supposed to be their friend even though he’s some kind of supernatural creature and in the past that hasn’t worked out too well (Dean’s not mentioning Ruby, but, you know - Ruby for christ sake!). Dean’s not even going to think about the ring he was wearing (on that finger, by the way) that he doesn’t remember owning, isn’t his usual taste, and happens to look like the one Cas had been wearing and fiddling with in the hotel grounds just before he took off. Dean has taken the ring off because looking at it gives him a hollow feeling that he could do without right now.

Sam comes back in to the motel room.

“No dice, huh?” Dean asks, glancing up from the TV to look at his brother.

Sam looks at him. The look he gives Dean is pitying but Dean doesn’t know why he should be pitied. 

“Dean, there’s probably something I should tell you,” Sam says, sitting on the edge of the second bed.

“Sam, it’s okay. I’m cool with it. We have a supernatural friend. Just tell me he’s not a demon.”

Sam looks surprised. “Absolutely not! He’s an angel.”

“You’re kidding,” Dean says sitting upright. “A flying dick? Are you an idiot? You know what those assholes have done to us.”

“He’s not like the others, Dean. He’s our friend.”

Dean flops back down against the headboard. He changes channel.

“You and Cas are… close,” Sam says.

Dean looks at his brother. “Look, I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember him. I’m sure if he’s the all-round good guy you seem to think he is, we’ll get to be friends again.” He goes back to the TV, flicks through another three channels. Sam doesn’t move. Dean’s not sure why Sam’s trying so hard to get him to remember Cas, but he’s been at it all day, prompting Dean with odd bits of information. Dean puts down the remote. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind and why this is so important to you?”

Sam looks as if he’s going to, but then he just says, “I don’t think you’ll believe me.”

#

Dean falls asleep on the bed, hugging a pillow. He dreams about glacier-blue eyes watching him fondly, but the face they belong to is out of reach, indistinct. Even so he feels safe, and he feels loved. He can still feel it when he wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, the sense of the dream lingering and wrapping around him like a warm blanket. He rolls over and reaches an arm across into the other half of the bed and for just a second he expects to find someone else there. He shrugs off the disappointment when he finds the spot where his arm lies is empty and cold.

He turns over and swings his legs over the side of the bed, gets up and pads to the bathroom. He’s standing there pissing in a half-asleep haze when he registers the voices outside the bathroom window. One of which is Sam. He shakes the last drop of piss from the end of his dick, tucks himself back into his boxers, and climbs up onto the toilet seat so he can peer out of the window.

Sam is talking to Cas. Dean’s glad the guy came back because Sam had seemed pretty cut up about it when he disappeared on them, but even so they don’t seem happy.

“Perhaps it’s better this way,” Cas says.

“In what way is it better? Better for you? Better for Dean? Better for me? We need each other. You and Dean need each other.” Sam’s leaning in and down to try and catch the guy’s eye, because Cas is looking away and down at the ground, and Sam is about a foot taller than him at the best of times. Sam gives up. “Come and hang out with us, and Dean might remember.”

Cas does look at Sam then, with wide glacier-blue eyes, and Dean almost falls off the toilet seat. The face in his dreams comes into focus, but it still doesn’t make any sense. “I don’t know if I can stand it if he doesn’t,” Cas says. He coughs into the sleeve of his coat. 

“You still got that cough?” Sam reaches out a hand to feel the guy’s forehead for heaven’s sake. That’s intimate. Dean wishes like hell he could remember Cas. Cas obviously isn’t just some random acquaintance, or occasional friend. “You’re hot,” Sam says pulling his hand away from Cas’s brow, his face creasing into a worried frown.

“I’m fine.” Cas looks to the left and then to the right, avoiding Sam again. “We don’t know that Dean will ever remember,” he says, “but I will stop by later and we’ll take it from there.”

“Yeah,” Sam says obviously relieved, “that’s good.” He puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it.”

Cas doesn’t look convinced, but he nods, and then he disappears. Dean retreats back to his bed, and is busy pretending to be asleep by the time Sam creeps quietly back into the room.

#

The next day they follow up on a possible water sprite. Dean stands shoulder to shoulder with Sam and they stare out at the unnaturally placid water. The water is a dull gray in the fading evening light.

“What do you think?” Dean asks, pointing out across the water. He huddles into his jacket. It’s spring but it’s still cold.

“Huh?” Sam’s distracted. He keeps looking at his watch. Dean’s guessing it’s because Cas promised to turn up and hasn’t yet. Dean can’t mention it though because he’s not supposed to know.

“The sprite,” Dean says. “Do we have a water sprite problem?”

“Oh.” Sam refocuses briefly on the problem at hand. “I think so, don’t you?” He looks at his watch.

They set up camp. Sam lights a fire while Dean gets the guns out of the trunk, along with blankets and a collection of emergency rations that Sam turns his nose up at but eats anyway.  
The lake stays placid. 

Cas shows about eleven-thirty, just as they’re settling down for the night. He looks a bit gray, but what does Dean know. Maybe he always looks like that. Sam however looks worried, especially when the dude gives one of his wet, wracking coughs.

“I expected you earlier,” Sam says in an accusing tone that Dean recognizes all too well; it’s been directed his way enough times.

Cas looks guilty, slides his eyes away from Sam’s to meet Dean’s. They stay there, staring at Dean. Dean stares back and doesn’t look away. There’s something nudging at the edge of his subconscious mind but when he reaches for it, it skitters away. It doesn’t stop him from realizing that whoever this Cas is, he’s important in some way. 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says eventually.

“Hi,” Dean says, then he blurts out, “I’m sorry I don’t remember you.” He pauses. “Sometimes I think I’m about to.” He looks across at Sam. He’s kind of doing this for Sam and Sam looks encouraging. “You should stick around more, you know, I’m just saying. It might come back to me.”

“Do you remember anything at all?” Cas asks.

Dean digs deep into his memories but he doesn’t, not specifics. There are things he now suspects are missing things, holes where memories should be, that maybe Cas is supposed to fill but that’s it. He wants to be able to say something that will wipe the sad, hurting look from Cas’s face. It seems important to do that, to replace it with a smile, even a small one. Dean can even imagine what that looks like if he thinks about it hard enough. But he shakes his head instead. “Sorry.”

Cas sighs, and turns back to Sam. “I’ll keep watch while you two sleep.” Without waiting for a response, he walks to the edge of the lake and sits stiffly on a boulder. Dean falls asleep watching Cas silhouetted against the glow off the water. 

#

Dean wakes suddenly to the sound of splashing. He’s on his feet in seconds and racing to the water’s edge, getting there just ahead of Sam. The water’s all churned up about twenty meters from the shore and he focuses trying to see what’s happening. He catches a hand raised out of the water then a flash of tan, then he can see it’s Cas fighting with something else in the water. The water sprite. Dean has a sudden urgent need to get Cas out of there, to pull him away and back to shore and safety. He can’t explain it, the urge is as strong as if it was Sam, instinctive, primal. He takes off his jacket.

“Dean, what are you doing,” Sam asks, sounding alarmed.

“Saving Cas.” He takes off his boots. 

Sam grabs his shoulder. “Cas can cope with a water sprite.”

“Does he look as if he’s coping?” Dean nods in the direction of the struggle.

Sam stares out at the water, and concedes with a sharp inclination of his head that Dean might be right. “Just be careful, then,” he says.

Dean wades into the water at a fast pace, and as soon as it’s deep enough he dives in and starts swimming. Cas seems to be trying to pull the sprite up out of the water, at the same rate the sprite is trying to pull him under. Cas is losing. His head and arms appear above the surface much less than the sprite’s do. When he is above the surface, that damnable cough of his has him spluttering, and choking. But Cas isn’t fighting the sprite, Dean realizes, he’s trying to keep its head above water and work it towards the shore. Cas is trying to save it. It doesn’t make any sense… unless Cas doesn’t know it’s a sprite.

Fuck. “Cas,” Dean yells. Then again, and again.

The sprite spots Dean first, and grinning puts a hand on the top of Cas’s head and pushes him under the water. Cas surfaces again almost immediately, this time facing the shore and he spots Dean. Cas’s face registers shock, and he swivels fast to look at the sprite, then back at Dean. He growls. “Close your eyes,” he shouts at Dean over the water. He slams the heel of his hand into the sprite’s forehead, and Dean shuts his eyes tight just before the flash of white energy bursts out, visible on the other side of his eyelids. 

He’s grabbed around his arm, he snaps opens his eyes and Cas is treading water right next to him.

“Are you okay?” Cas asks.

“I should be asking you that. What the hell were you doing?”

“I thought it was you,” Cas gasps, then coughs. “It tricked me.”

“We need to get out of this water,” Dean says, looking worriedly at Cas’s pale pallor. “It’s frigging freezing in here.” On cue, his body shudders as the cold hits properly now the adrenaline is wearing off.

Cas nods, and they both turn and swim towards the shore. They scramble out, both sodden. Dean’s shivering fit to bust a gut, and Sam helps him out of his wet clothes, and into his dry jacket and all the blankets they have. It’s a blessed relief. 

Cas sits down heavily on the boulder he was using earlier, still wet, but not showing signs of feeling the cold, and Dean guesses angels have more tolerance for such things. Dean sits down next to him. There’s not much space and they’re close, much closer than Dean thinks he should be comfortable with considering that as far as he knows he only met Cas yesterday, but it doesn’t feel wrong. Cas buries his left hand between his thighs, out of sight, and his right curls and uncurls restlessly against the material of his pants.

Dean hesitates, then says quietly, “I’m guessing that if I remembered you, we’d be holding hands right about now.”

Cas looks at him sharply, then away again. “Probably.”

Dean reaches out and takes Cas’s right hand in his left. Cas tenses. “You don’t have to,” Cas says.

“I know. But it feels right.”


	22. Gazing Into Each Other's Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Dean knows there’s a whole bunch of his memories - intimate, happy, scared, safe - where there’s a Cas-shaped gap; he knows it’s not enough to know; he knows he needs to remember."

Here’s the thing. Dean doesn’t remember Cas. He doesn’t remember anything they’ve done together; he doesn’t remember how long they’ve been friends; he doesn’t remember how they even got to be friends, Cas being an angel and all. He doesn’t remember what Cas likes to eat, or drink, or even if he does eat or drink; he doesn’t remember what he looks like without the trenchcoat on; he doesn’t remember what annoys Cas; he doesn’t remember what makes him happy.

He knows some of these things now, because he asked Sam after the water sprite hunt, but he still doesn’t remember them. There are other things that Dean knows that he didn’t have to ask Sam about. He knows he feels happier when Cas is close; he knows he feels something strong - almost overpowering - for Cas that is part attraction and part family, he knows there’s a whole bunch of his memories - intimate, happy, scared, safe - where there’s a Cas-shaped gap; he knows it’s not enough to know; he knows he needs to remember. He knows Cas needs that too. Dean gets the impression that what he and Cas have has been hard-won. He knows what their life is like now, and they can’t afford to spend another eighteen months doing it over. In fact, it suddenly seems vitally important that they don’t waste any more time. Cas hasn’t been around much, though Sam says that isn’t unusual. If Dean remembers - no, when Dean remembers - that’s going to change.

He takes the ring he was wearing when he lost his memories out of the duffel where he’d stashed it in his initial panic. Cas has been trying to hide its twin - putting his hand in his pocket, behind his back, between his thighs - but he hasn’t taken it off. That means it’s important. Dean holds the ring between his forefinger and thumb and looks at it in the light. There’s movement in the clear blue stone, something a little wispy that glows just a little. He puts it on the third finger of his left hand, the same finger he’d taken it from. His finger tingles, and when he closes his eyes, there are almost memories, snatches but just out of reach. 

Frustrated, he picks up his phone, speed dial four. The phone only rings twice before it’s answered. 

“Bobby, I need a favor.”

#

“Are you sure this’ll work?” Sam asks.

“Of course not, jerk. It’s a goddamn psychic. It’s got a fifty-fifty chance at best.” Dean says, because his brother’s an idiot if he thinks anything in their life’s guaranteed.

Sam scowls, then shrugs. “What have we got to lose?”

“Jeez, don’t jinx it!”

Dean calls Cas. Speed dial three, Dean had discovered on day one AML (After Memory Loss). Cas isn’t good on the phone Dean found out on day two AML. Dean tells him where they are, Cas says okay then hangs up. He turns up only a couple of seconds later. It’s been forty-eight hours since they last saw him, and well, to be honest, he looks a bit rough. The first thing he does when he gets there is look around for somewhere to sit down, and when he spies the empty wooden chair by the table, he practically falls into it.

Sam looks horrified. “Are you okay,” he asks.

“I’m fine. I will be fine. I had a run-in with two of my brethren. I miss… “ he glances up at Dean, then away. “I’m fine,” he repeats. He coughs. It doesn’t really help with the whole ‘I’m fine’ thing.

Dean takes a step towards Cas. His instinct is to comfort, but he doesn’t remember how it works with them, so he comes to an abrupt halt, and looks down at the ring on his finger; for luck maybe. He’s not sure. Cas notices. His eyes widen when he sees Dean’s wearing the ring, then he looks up at Dean.

“I miss you too,” Dean says, “and I don’t even remember why.”

#

The psychic’s home is everything Bobby promised it would be - grimy, untidy, dark, miserable. The psychic himself isn’t a lot better, though he does remind Dean of Chuck in a way, which is a weird kind of comforting.

Cas hadn’t exactly leapt at the idea, but another thing Dean has quickly figured out about Cas is that he’s a pessimist at heart, so Dean isn’t too bothered by his lack of enthusiasm. 

“A witch, Bobby said,” the psychic starts by way of introduction, gesturing to indicate that Dean and Cas should sit in the two armchairs that are facing each other in front of a small fire-place. Cas looks as if he might want to run, so Dean takes his hand and squeezes it once, quickly. Then they sit down.

The psychic looks from one to the other of them, then he narrows his eyes at Cas. “You’re not human,” he says.

“No,” says Cas.

“Does it matter?” asks Dean. If this doesn’t work, he’s not sure what’s next, but he will find something. He needs to remember Cas, then he needs to tell Cas that he loves him, even though he doesn’t remember him, then he needs to get Cas to stop all this disappearing for days on end malarkey that Sam says is normal. He doesn’t want it to be normal. If there’s one thing that forgetting Cas has done for Dean, it’s remind Dean how frigging important Cas is to him. And yes, he knows that doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t care. 

“Don’t know,” admits the psychic with a shrug. Then he claps his hands, suddenly gleeful, coming across as slightly crazy in Dean’s opinion, but hell, he’s seen a lot more crazy than this. “Let’s see shall we? Hold hands.” They do, left hand to right hand, right hand to left hand. “Now look at each other - don’t blink.” This Dean can do. He smiles, and he sees a small curl in the corner’s of Cas’s mouth.

Cas coughs. That’s another thing, thinks Dean, frowning. There’s no way that cough is normal. Cas might think he can get away with the ‘I’m fine’ line while Dean doesn’t remember him, but as soon as Dean remembers, there’ll be no more of that.

“Concentrate,” the psychic says loudly, snapping his fingers as if he can read Dean’s mind.

The guy starts chanting in a very monotonous tone. Cas’s eyes are so blue. Dean could gaze into them for ever. He squeezes Cas’s hands in his. He starts to feel sleepy. He gazes into Cas’s eyes. They’re so blue.

Cas lifts Dean’s left hand to his face, and kisses the ring on Dean’s finger. The ring glows warm and Dean smiles. Cas did that outside the hotel before they took down the manticore. It’s no less soppy now, but he still likes it.

It takes a moment for that to sink in. 

He jumps out of his seat. “I remember you!”


	23. Arguing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn’t exactly how Dean thought it would go when he got his memories back. For a start he’d thought there’d be a lot more nakedness."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is sad. I even made myself sad.

This isn’t exactly how Dean thought it would go when he got his memories back. For a start he’d thought there’d be a lot more nakedness, but here they are side-by-side on his motel room bed, fully-dressed. Cas hasn’t even taken off his coat.

“I love you,” Dean says, tightening the arm he has around Cas’s shoulders to pull him closer, the warmth of Cas’s arm bleeding through the layers of too many frigging clothes where Cas presses against Dean’s side. 

“I know,” Cas says, “You might have mentioned it once or twice before.” Dean can’t tell if he’s amused, or pissed off.

“And I’m going to mention it again,” Dean says, turning his head and nuzzling behind Cas’s ear, “because I can’t believe those frigging witches made me forget, even for a little while.” 

Cas, although he’s undoubtedly pleased Dean has his memories back, seems to be finding it hard to just shrug off the past few days as easily as Dean has. Something is bugging him, but Dean has no idea what it is - he doesn’t think it’s anything he did - hell, Cas hasn’t been around that much so it’s not as if Dean had time to do anything stupid. 

“It was distracting,” Cas says, “two of my brothers caught me unawares. I was injured. I wanted to come to you, and then I remembered I couldn’t.” As he finishes the sentence, Cas turns his face away from Dean, and coughs. Dean feels the rattle and hears the wheeze in Cas’s chest as he takes in a breath to replace the air he’s just coughed out. Dean doesn’t say anything, he can only deal with one Cas-related freak-out at a time.

“You could have still come,” he says, “we would have looked after you - stitched you up, whatever needed doing.” The thought of Cas injured and alone thinking he had nowhere to go makes his chest ache.

“It wasn’t only physical comfort I needed,” Cas says.

Dean hadn’t really thought about the last few days from Cas’s point of view and he’s realizing, belatedly, that Cas had it a lot harder than he did. 

“I’m sorry,” he says because he can’t think of anything more useful than that right at this moment.

Cas drops his head back against the headboard, and when he speaks, he speaks quietly and it’s almost as if he’s talking to himself. “I’ve never been so dependent on the presence of one single other being.”

“It must have been crap for you,” Dean says. “But I have my memories back now; we’re back where we were, aren’t we?” he asks anxiously.

“I think the last few days is what it will be like when you die,” Cas says. “Empty. Lonely. Painful. What if you were to really die?” Cas asks. 

“What if you do,” Dean counters.

“I nearly did,” Cas says. “You wouldn’t have cared. Perhaps that would have been easier on us all.”

“I’d care now,” Dean says not liking where this is going one little bit.

Cas lifts his sleeve and coughs into it. “It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat,” he says, wearily. He turns his head to Dean. “I’m compromised by the nature of our relationship. I wasn’t efficient or effective when looking for my father, or when battling my brothers. I was injured more easily, and more severely. I was too distracted. I believe we should return to a relationship based on friendship, not on… not on anything more.” Cas pauses, stares at Dean who is staring back and he isn’t saying anything because there are no words. “I missed you too much,” Cas adds.

Dean’s looking at him trying to work out if he’s serious, but of course he’s serious - this is Cas. Cas is running away from him because Dean hurt him, through no fault of Dean’s, but Dean hurt him all the same.

“That’s the most fucking ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Dean starts, when the jumble of words finally find their way from brain to mouth. But unfortunately he doesn’t stop. He couldn’t tell you what the words are, they just come out in a stream. He thinks he says all the things he was going to say anyway, about need and want and staying, but he also thinks there’s a few choice sentences in there about selfishness, and cowardice.

It’s probably the latter that finally sends Cas packing so that Dean finds himself yelling, “I love you, you bastard,” into empty space.


	24. Making Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean makes good use of his phone plan.

“Give him time,” Sam says. “He’s just scared.”

“I’m scared too,” Dean mutters, playing with his phone, wondering whether to hit send on his latest text message. Fuck it. He hits send. Cas isn’t going to wind him up about it being pathetically girly; he doesn’t know any better. He looks at his brother. “You’re good at this stuff. Tell me what to do.”

“You’re asking me for relationship advice? That’s a laugh. All my girlfriends di… “ Sam trails off without finishing the sentence, but it’s too late, Dean knows how that sentence ends.

“Ring him, check he’s okay,” Dean says, pleading. 

“Why don’t you ring him?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“What makes you think I do?”

“You always seem to, with Cas,” Dean says. Sam jerks his head back in surprise, and Dean waves an embarrassed hand, “you’re like bros or something. He listens to you.”

“It’s only twelve hours since he left,” Sam points out. Dean narrows his eyes.

“Okay, okay. Jeez.”

Sam leaves the room to make the call. 

“Well?” Dean asks when Sam comes back fifteen minutes later.

“There’s a vamp nest about two hundred miles away if we’re interested.”

Dean frowns. “You were supposed to be checking he’s okay.”

“He made me promise not to tell you what we talked about.“

“The whole point of you making the call was so you could tell me, Sam, so spill.”

Sam shifts uncomfortably. “Okay, but don’t tell him I told you. He’s having a really crap time. He thought all his feelings would just go away once he decided this was the right thing to do, but of course they haven’t, so he misses you and he feels guilty.”

“There’s no way Cas would have said all that.”

“I’m reading between the lines,” Sam says, “but if it’s any consolation I think he’ll work it out.” Sam’s brow furrows in the way he does when he’s thinking too hard. “When you last spoke to him, did he still have that cough?”

“Yeah. And what do you mean you think he’ll work it out?”

“The not having you there when he needed you took him by surprise, then you acted like nothing had changed when you got your memories back, but for him, things had changed. I think he’ll come back when he’s thought about it. Did the cough sound worse or the same?”

“I dunno. Maybe a bit worse, not much. I had my mind on other things at the time.” Dean peers intently at his brother. “Why? You worried about it?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“So, what do I do?”

“About the cough?”

“About getting Cas back. First things first.”

“To be honest, I think what you’re doing is the best approach.”

Dean looks at his phone. What Sam thinks he’s doing, and what he’s actually doing might be two different things. “What am I doing?”

Sam looks at him, knowingly. “Wearing him down with soppy messages.” Yeah, okay, so Sam knows what Dean’s doing.

Dean lets Sam drive so that Dean can send Cas a string of soppy messages. Sam thinks this is the biggest indication of how far gone Dean is on Cas, so Dean’s first message is:

‘Sam’s driving so that I can send U lots of txt msgs. That means I love u btw.’

‘A lot’

Then he follows it up every ten minutes with another one.

‘I love you’

‘I miss you’

‘I need you’

‘Come back to me’

‘I promise I won’t die’

‘I’ll never leave you’

‘Please don’t leave me’

‘I hope you’re taking care of yourself’

‘Talk to me’

‘Please’

Dean’s disheartened by the lack of response. When Sam stops to get gas he calls and leaves a voice mail instead.

“Yeah,” he starts, and it comes out a little bit of a higher pitch than he’s entirely comfortable with so he clears his throat, then carries on, “so I need you to come back to me, man. If you could see how pathetic I look right now, how miserable I am without you, you’d come back. And I know you’re miserable without me. You have to be. We love each other, we’re meant to be together. Who the hell else would have us, anyway? You saved me. You’re still saving me. No-one else can ever take your place with me. Even when I didn’t remember you, I still knew I loved you. You’re encoded into me. No-one else knows you like I know you. Who else is going to laugh at your dorky jokes? Put up with your crappy moods? I know you’re scared, dude. Hell, I’m scared. You make me weak, ‘cause if anyone tries anything with you I swear I’m gonna tear their throat out, and if you die, god forbid, I’m going to completely lose it. But you make me strong too. You’re my support, you’re my foundation. And I know I have Sam too, so I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to think you don’t have anyone else, but you can have Sam too. Sam likes you. You guys are like brothers. If anything happens to me, you call Sam.” Dean’s voice cracks a little, and he wipes away the wetness starting to form in his eye. It must be the wind. “Just don’t leave me because you’re scared, man. Please. It’s a stupid reason. I’ll look out for you. We’ll make it as good as we can. Just please come back.” 

Dean hangs up. He looks out of the window, sees Sam hanging back near the gas-station’s store, like a considerate little brother. He squeezes his eyes shut, wipes the tear away, throws his phone over his shoulder into the rear seat. He doesn’t have the heart to keep sending text messages that go unanswered.

“I don’t know how to cope with the possibility of your loss,” Cas says from the back seat, making Dean practically leap out of his skin. “When you lost your memories of me… I have never experienced anything like that before. I don’t want to feel that again. How do I stop it?”

Cas coughs, and somehow it sounds worse when Dean can’t see him trying to bury it in his coat sleeve, or a pillow or something.

“You don’t,” Dean says quietly. He twists around to face Cas. Fuck but Cas looks ill; sweaty and pale. “Are you okay?” Dean asks in a sudden rush of concern.

“I’m fine.” Cas irritably waves away the hand Dean’s moving towards his face to feel his temperature. “It’s just… Dean - how does this work? How do I stop feeling anxious about losing you? Tell me how.”

“I’m sorry, I wish I knew how. I guess you don’t ever really stop,” Dean says, “but it kind of becomes background noise.” Dean thinks. “When the manticore got you the second time, in the chest, you died. For a few minutes you stopped breathing and your heart stopped. At the hospital they had you hooked up to all these machines that breathed for you, and that would tell them if your heart stopped again - you remember?”

“Of course.”

“I never told you this, I wanted you to think I was being strong for you… but I was a wreck. I kept throwing up. Ever wondered how you got a bruise on the back of your hand? That was me squeezing too tight. I bawled my eyes out once, and that was after they told me you were going to be okay. And right now I’m worried sick about that frigging cough you’ve got. You look ill, and all you can say is ‘I’m fine’.” He takes a deep breath. “I guess what I’m saying is, it comes with the territory and yeah, it’s not a nice feeling to be constantly anxious about losing someone you love, but the anxiety isn’t there all the time and it’s worth it.” Dean twists further in his seat so he can look Cas in the eye. “Isn’t it?” he asks desperately.

Cas stares at him, blue eyes boring into Dean, looking for god-knows-what. Dean matches him, stare for stare, waiting him out, silently imploring. Dean’s left hand is gripping the top of the back rest on the front seat for support, and Cas’s eyes drop to look as he takes Dean’s hand in his, links their fingers together, lifts their joined hands to hold them against his cheek. Dean almost jerks away at how hot Cas’s skin is, but he daren’t move, not until Cas says what he wants so much to hear. “Yes, I think it’s probably worth it.”


	25. Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "as he turns he’s already taking his first steps forward towards Cas, which is lucky because it means he’s close enough to catch him when he passes out"

After Dean and Cas made up in the car at the Gas Station (shocking two little old dears who drove up in an ancient Honda, not to mention Sam had refused to talk to Dean for nearly three hours, which Dean thinks was a bit excessive considering he and Cas still had the majority of their clothes on), they don’t see Cas for twenty eight hours and forty two minutes (not that Dean’s counting). Dean and Sam had gone and dealt with the vamp nest (less like a nest, and more like a nervous huddle), and Cas had been in the middle of something angelic in Indiana that he said was boring and wouldn’t take long. 

Twenty eight hours and forty two minutes is long, and Dean’s more than ready to point this out when the tell-tale flutter, along with the tell-tale cough announces Cas’s arrival behind him. Dean shoves the last of his freshly laundered tee-shirts into his duffel before turning and as he turns he’s already taking his first steps forward towards Cas, which is lucky because it means he’s close enough to catch him when he passes out.

#

“Well?”

“A hundred and four.”

“That’s not good.”

“No.” Sam stands up and puts the thermometer into a bag on the nightstand.

Dean paces, for all the room allows it. Cas coughs into the pillow. “I’m fine,” he says.

“Shut up, you’re not fine,” Dean mutters in reply, and puts a wad of toilet paper into Cas’s hand. “Cough into this”. Then Dean feels guilty when Cas does his best kicked-puppy face, so he sits on the bed and picks Cas’s hand up in his, wrapping his hand around Cas’s overly warm fingers and trying very hard not to just scoop him up, put his arms around him, and squeeze him against his chest. Seriously, they’ve had such crappy luck over the past week, he thinks he’s going to cry. He looks at Sam. “So what do we do?”

“Well to be honest, it looks like normal human pneumonia.”

“See, I told you I was fine.” 

Dean doesn’t credit that with a response. “But it was the witches potion - the one that killed the manticore.” He worries at his bottom lip with his teeth.

Sam shrugs. “Cas only got a whiff of it though. I don’t know, Dean, but maybe that mild a dose just gave him a temporary supernatural creature immunity bypass or something.”

“That’s exactly what happened. It’s a simple human illness. I’m fine.” To emphasize his point, Cas coughs a shit-load of gunk from his lungs up into the toilet paper. 

“Of course,” Sam says sarcastically, wrinkling his nose in disgust, “if Cas had admitted he wasn’t fine a few days ago, it might not have gotten this bad.”

Cas growls his displeasure. 

“If it is pneumonia then antibiotics should fix it?” Dean asks, ignoring the gentle bickering.

“Yeah. Easily.” Sam doesn’t move. Dean stares at him. “Oh, you want me to get them?” Sam asks.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Of course. I’m not leaving Cas on his own. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sam says with a put-upon sigh. 

When Sam’s gone, Cas turns into some kind of pathetic boneless lump. All the machismo drops away, he even whimpers. “I feel awful,” he says. Dean almost laughs, but he daren’t. Cas can still fly.

“I know,” he says, wiping a cold, damp cloth over Cas’s brow. “But you’ll be okay.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” 

Cas’s shirt is open and Dean wipes the sweat on his chest away with the cloth. Cas squirms. “Cold,” he murmurs shivering, and buries his face into the blanket.

“You look adorable like that.” Dean’s rewarded with a surly growl from amongst the bedding. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier that you were feeling this ill?”

“I thought it would go away. When I feel unwell, it always goes away.” 

“Except when it doesn’t,” Dean says.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Cas scowls. 

“Don’t be a smart-ass.” Dean maneuvers Cas and himself so that Cas’s head is on Dean’s lap. “Next time tell us. Sam’s right - and for God’s sake, don’t tell him I said that - but this’d be fixed by now if we knew earlier.” He strokes his fingers through Cas’s sweaty hair, which is actually kind of gross but Cas seems to like it. Cas goes quiet, closes his eyes and his breath evens out a bit, but Dean doesn’t think he’s asleep, so he keeps stroking Cas’s hair, and occasionally mutters quiet endearments that make Cas’s lip curl up just a tiny bit in the corner. Which maybe makes Dean’s lip curl up more than a tiny bit in the corner, because Dean’s a complete and utter sap. 

“Cas,” Dean says, “when you feel better, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”


	26. Getting Married

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There’s absolutely no apocalyptic or hunt related reason for Cas to be here, but he’s here. He’s here because when Dean asked him ‘The Question’, he’d said, “Yes, of course.”"

There’s absolutely no apocalyptic or hunt related reason for Cas to be here, but he’s here. He’s here because when Dean asked him ‘The Question’, he’d said, “Yes, of course.” 

Well, he’d said “yes, of course” after a bit of negotiation and clarification, and okay they’d maybe had to adapt the terms a little. But Dean’s okay with what they’ve ended up with… more than okay.

And after Cas said yes, he’d kissed away Dean’s shock at the relative ease of it all. Dean hadn’t had to use any of the prepared arguments and discussion points laid out in his head like some kind of presentation and now he’s being kissed senseless, and when Cas runs the tip of his tongue along the swell of Dean’s bottom lip his brain kind of sizzles.

“You shouldn’t be so surprised,” Cas murmurs, hot breath damp against Dean’s cheek. “I said in Kiruna that I didn’t see the point in denying ourselves what we both want.”

Fuck, but Kiruna feels a long, long time ago. “I remember,” says Dean, smiling, leaning back to look unashamedly at Castiel laid out naked beside him. He trails a fingertip down the smooth skin of Cas’s chest, “I figured you just said that because you wanted an excuse to make out.”

Cas nips Dean’s lip. “I didn’t know I needed an excuse,” he growls.

Dean shuffles to his knees and leans forward, his hands landing either side of Cas’s head on the wall behind the bed, and he presses his mouth hard against Cas’s, almost bruisingly hard. A lot of pent-up relief for all manner of things goes into that kiss - relief that Cas is alive, relief that he’s here, relief that he said yes. He smiles again, when he remembers that. 

Dean pulls back far enough to speak, his lips brushing lightly against Cas’s as his mouth makes the shape of the words, “You don’t need an excuse.” 

He pushes forwards again to kiss Cas, gentler this time. Cas wraps his arms around Dean’s back pulling him down so that Dean’s lying with his weight on top of Cas, Cas opening his legs to let Dean fall between them, lifting his hips to grind his cock into Dean’s belly. Dean moans happily, dipping his forehead to rest against Cas’s collarbone and shifting to one side to slide his cock alongside Cas’s. The heads of their cocks catch and rub against each other, and Dean reaches down between them, wrapping his hand around them both, swiping the pad of his thumb over Cas’s slit, then his own, smearing pre-cum around the heads, then stroking down to make them both wet and slippery. Dean circles his hips so that they’re sliding together and Cas groans deep and wordless in his ear. 

Dean shuffles up the bed so the weight of Cas’s arms falls over the small of his back. He sighs appreciatively when Cas grips tighter and pulls Dean down against him. Dean kisses Cas on the cheek, pokes his tongue out to lie it flat along Cas’s skin and drags it down to the line of Cas’s jaw, catching on rough stubble as he keeps going along the edge of the bone, to the cleft in the center of Cas’s chin, under his chin to where his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. He sucks and tastes clean, sweet sweat with a faint underlay of salt. He kisses down to Cas’s collarbone, and Cas adjusts his hands on Dean’s back to fall to hold either side of Dean’s waist, his fingertips burning little hot spots into Dean’s skin where they grip solidly and surely.

“Tell me where next, Cas,” Dean murmurs, planting kitten kisses along the line of Cas’s clavicle from the little knob by the hollow of Cas’s throat to where it meets his shoulder. 

“Nipples,” breathes Cas without hesitation. Dean grins. Cas is so predictable and he has the most incredibly sensitive nipples. Dean kisses down Cas’s chest to his right nipple, skates the flat of his tongue along the already hard bud, then flicks at it with the tip of his tongue before taking it between his teeth and squeezing gently. Cas arches his chest up towards Dean’s mouth, makes the filthiest, most drawn-out groan Dean’s ever heard outside of a porno movie, and Dean groans in sympathy.

“What next?” Dean gasps.

“I want to suck you,” Cas says at the same time as his hands come up to Dean’s shoulders and push him backwards, unbalanced, so they end up, positions switched, like two ends of a see-saw, Dean on his back with Cas straddled over him. Cas gives a feral grin as he leans down, kissing Dean’s chest down the line of his sternum while playfully teasing at Dean’s nipple with his thumb. Cas drags blunt fingernails down Dean’s side, along the line of his ribs, to his waist, to his hips. He kisses Dean’s belly, keeps working lower until his chin, then his nose are nuzzling into the blonde curls between Dean’s legs. Cas’s cheek brushes against the side of Dean’s cock and Dean’s cock twitches in expectation and want.

Dean grabs a handful of Cas’s hair and tugs lightly. “Anytime you’re ready would be good,” he moans and Cas gives a throaty chuckle. Cas shifts his head, and nudges Dean’s cock with the tip of his nose, and Dean throws his head back when he feels the wet, open, hot inside of Cas’s mouth wrap itself around the head of his cock, followed by the agonizingly slow sensation of Cas taking him in as far as he can, until Dean’s cock is nudging the back of Cas’s throat, when Cas slides his mouth back up Dean’s length, scraping his teeth just a little against the skin at an equally agonizingly slow pace.

“Stop teasing, you bastard,” Dean says, lifting his hips just enough to drive himself back into the warmth of Cas’s mouth. Cas sucks in, takes Dean in to the back of his throat, then slides him back out again, Cas’s mouth is so wet and messy around Dean’s cock, Dean can hear the slurping, slapping noises as Cas takes him in and lets him out in earnest now, the hard suction presses against his cock and he moans Cas’s name like a chant. Dean can feel Cas’s cock bumping against his thigh, as Cas rises and sinks over Dean. Dean wants to touch it and one hand scrambles uselessly trying to reach it before Cas wraps a hand around Dean’s balls and squeezes gently, tugging a little, just the way Dean likes it, and an expectant heat coils up fast in Dean’s belly and his spine. His fingers tighten in Cas’s hair instinctively, and his back arches up, his shoulders pressing down into the mattress just before he clenches and spills into Cas’s mouth, his cock twitching hard with every spurt. Cas keeps sucking, until Dean tugs again at his hair when he gets too sensitive, and it starts to move from pleasure to uncomfortable.

Cas crawls back up the bed, looking smug.

“Yeah, I know, you’re getting damned good at that,” Dean says, reaching a hand behind Cas’s head and pulling him in to kiss him, letting his tongue lick his own cum out of Cas’s mouth. “How do you want it?” Dean asks, pulling away.

“Soon,” Cas says, sounding raw and desperate, looking down at his hard cock, tip beading pre-cum enthusiastically, which, yeah, Dean can see is not going to need much coaxing. He laughs breathlessly. “On your back,” he says and Cas is eager to comply. Dean doesn’t waste any time, dipping his head and taking Cas in as far as he can without hesitation. He’s kneeling by Cas’s hip, and he lets his left hand splay on Cas’s belly, keeping him still, and his right dips under Cas’s hips to knead at the muscles in his ass. He slides Cas’s cock in and out of his mouth fast and sloppy and the index finger of his right hand catches on Cas’s hole and Dean falters, but Cas gasps and pushes towards the slight pressure, so Dean does it again intentionally, and Cas yells something in Enochian. Dean sucks Cas down, and he feels Cas tense, his balls draw up against the heel of Dean’s right hand, then Cas is coming on Dean’s tongue and hitting the roof of Dean’s mouth in hot, short spurts, yelling and gasping through his orgasm. Dean lets Cas slip out of his mouth and uses his hand to finish him off, until Cas is just this shivering jelly lying next to Dean on the bed.

Dean leans on an elbow and stares at him. Cas has his eyes closed, he’s sweaty and panting. He looks frigging gorgeous.

“Good?” Dean asks eventually.

Cas opens his eyes, and turns his head to look at Dean. “Not bad,” he says, and grins when Dean kicks him playfully.

#

“You asked him to marry you?” Sam screws his face up in a mix of surprise and pleased.

“Sort of. Well, yes. But then no.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Sam points out.

“Well, I did ask him, but then I might have ruined it by mentioning that I don’t really see the point of marriage.”

“Yeah, I can see how that might ruin it,” Sam snides.

“So Cas said that’s okay because angels don’t really do the marriage thing anyway. Not the pointless bit of paper thing.”

“And,” Sam practically screams when Dean doesn’t immediately explain.

“So we’re going to get not-married.”

“I have no idea what that means either.” 

Dean can tell Sam’s losing patience. Dean’s quite enjoying the teasing. He taps the side of his nose. “You’ll have to wait and see. You’re invited to our non-wedding.”


	27. On One of Their Birthdays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dude, it’s not actually your birthday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder if, for these 30 day OTP things, you're allowed to change the days of the prompts. 'cause I've got to say, it was hard fitting a birthday prompt in at this point. Like really hard.

Sam has got to be kidding. 

“No.”

Sam pulls bitch-face number fourteen. “He’s - “

“No.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s completely safe. And he’s the best suited of us all - unless you want to use Bobby?”

“God, no. That’s… that’s just… no.”

“So Cas it is then.”

“You know he’s still not over the pneumonia, right?”

“He’s fine, Dean. And it’s only a ghost. There’s absolutely nothing that can hurt him… or is it the Jo thing you don’t like?”

“I’m fine with the Jo thing.” And actually he is, he’s got no problem with the Jo thing, it’s just maybe he wanted a respite; a few days where they could enjoy each other. “You do know what our lives have been like over the past month? Near-death experiences; near-fatal illnesses; amnesia; break-ups! Can’t we have a week off?”

“Sure. We’ll just let the ghost keep killing off the birthday boys for a few days. Or maybe we can ask it politely if it doesn’t mind waiting until you’re ready?”

There are rare times Dean hates his brother. This is one. He grimaces. “Fine,” he grates out.

#

“I was not ‘birthed’ as you understand it.”

Dean sighs. He knew this was how it was going to go if he was honest.

“You just have to pretend. The ghost only goes for guys over a certain age who are there with their girlfriends for their birthday.”

Cas squints. “I’m not good at pretending.”

“Well, let Jo do all the pretending then. You just keep quiet and let Jo talk to the people in the restaurant.”

“Won’t Jo think it strange if I don’t talk to her.”

“You can talk to Jo, Dude” Dean says with exasperation. Seriously, sometimes Cas seems so switched on, and other times… 

“Okay,” Dean starts again, and he moves around to sit opposite Cas so he can look him in the eye more easily. He takes one of Cas’s hands in both of his out of habit. “From the top. Tell me.”

“I have to pretend it’s my birthday,” Cas starts, frowning. “If anyone asks, it’s my thirty-sixth birthday - you do know I’m a lot older than that, don’t you Dean?”

“I know. You look young for your age.” Dean grins. “And hot.” When Cas smiles back, Dean waves a hand encouraging Cas to carry on.

“I have to pretend Jo is my girlfriend?”

“Yeah.” 

Cas frowns at him. “Why can’t you pretend to be Jo’s boyfriend?”

“Sam and I are both a couple of years too young. The ghost probably won’t show. You wouldn’t believe it but Sam even suggested Bobby.”

Cas’s eyes light up briefly with hope.

“No,” says Dean pointedly. “What next?”

“When the restaurant brings the desert with the sparkler and the happy birthday musical box, the ghost will join us at the table,” Cas says.

“Then what?”

“Jo destroys the musical box while the ghost is preoccupied with me, which should in turn destroy the ghost. Don’t you think the restaurant will be upset?”

“Probably.” Dean shrugs. “You’ll probably get chucked out.” It’s not as if they’re going back.

“What else?” Cas asks.

It’s Dean’s turn to frown now. “Nothing. That’s it. Ghost gone, hunt over. You come back here with Jo.”

“Why do people say they are celebrating their birthday if all that happens is they get a desert with a sparkler in? It hardly seems like much of a celebration.”

Dean frowns. “A lot of people do other stuff too.”

“Like what?”

Dean thinks about it. He and Sam have never done much, if anything at all, for their birthdays. Some years they’ve even been known to forget their own birthdays. “Um, presents sometimes. Cake maybe.” Dean smiles and leans forward, “birthday kisses,” he says pressing his lips to Cas’s.

“Will Jo give me a present, or a cake or a birthday kiss?”

“Dude, it’s not actually your birthday.”

#

“What are you doing?” Sam asks, peering over Dean’s shoulder. The paper rustles as Dean tapes one end down. 

“Birthday present,” he mutters.

“For who?” Sam asks curiously.

“Cas.”

“Um… “

“Dude’s never had a birthday,” Dean says, perhaps a tad defensively.

“And in that box?” Sam nods his head indicating the plain square box on the counter.

“Cake.”

“Birthday cake? Seriously?” Sam takes two long strides across to the box and lifts one corner of the lid.

“Hey!” Dean yells. “No touching until he’s blown out the candles.”

“Candles?” Sam raises both eyebrows.

“Yeah.” Dean points to the right of the cake box.

Sam picks up the small packet of twelve birthday candles, and looks confused. “There’s only twelve.”

“I only need one,” Dean says, sticking a piece of tape over the other end of his wrapping that he’s given up trying to fold neatly. “It is only his first birthday after all.”

Sam is smirking so hard Dean can practically hear his face cracking. “Are you not even a teensy bit embarrassed by this?”

“Are you kidding, Sam?” Dean says without breaking from what he’s doing. “My angelic not-boyfriend significant other and I are getting not-married soon - you seriously don’t think I’m past being embarrassed about throwing him a not-birthday party?”

#

Cas smites the candle in annoyance when it turns out to be one of the ones that relights when you try to blow it out. The cake ends up with a little crater in the middle, and Dean ends up with strawberry frosting on his nose. Which Cas licks off. 

Sam makes ‘yueh’ noises. Jo just says, “aw, sweet.”

Cas seems pleased by Dean giving him his favorite Led Zeppelin tee-shirt for his not-birthday. “To sleep in,” Dean says.

“But we sleep naked,” Cas points out, raising an eyebrow in an unspoken question.

“Then I’ll have to take it off you every night before we go to sleep, won’t I.” Dean locks eyes with Cas and takes an instinctive half step closer, because to be honest just the thought of taking Cas out of that tee-shirt is starting to make him feel a little warm.

Jo giggles, and is still giggling when Sam drags her out of the room muttering something along the lines of “you don’t want to see this, believe me,” over her protests.

When Sam and Jo have closed (slammed) the door behind them, Cas closes the distance between himself and Dean, his eyes never leaving Dean’s. He wraps his arms around Dean’s waist. “Is it time for my birthday kisses now?” he asks.

Dean leans forward and rubs the tip of his nose against Cas’s, “Hell, yeah,” Dean breathes, “It’s more than frigging time. Happy birthday, Cas.”


	28. Doing Something Ridiculous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They’re a little under half way there before Dean works out there’s something going on. Sam’s asked for an unusual number of bathroom stops, not to mention that at each stop he disappears for at least fifteen minutes a time. And no, they didn’t have burritos for breakfast."

“It’s time,” Cas says quietly, when Dean’s eyelids flutter open unenthusiastically, and he finds himself being watched. Not that there’s anything unusual about that.

Dean rubs the sleep out of his eyes with the back of his knuckles. “Time for what?” 

He’s still half asleep, but Cas of course isn’t, which gives him an advantage. Dean has no idea why Cas always picks the exact moment Dean wakes up to have a conversation. Cas leans in and kisses Dean, short and sweet, then he shuffles onto his butt and sits cross-legged on the bed. He’s naked. Cas is always naked from the time they drop into the warmth of the blankets and each other, until the time they get ready to leave in the morning - whether he stays in the bed while Dean sleeps or not. Not that Dean’s complaining because a naked Cas is a beautiful sight.

“Stop staring at my penis.”

Dean smiles. “Like you mind.” He shuffles up the bed and leans against the headboard. “Time for what?” he asks again.

Cas keeps watching Dean and his left eye narrows the tiniest amount. It’s one of his tells, and Dean sits up a little straighter and pays a lot more attention. Cas doesn’t say anything but he lifts his own arm and glances at his inner forearm and the angry red angel-blade scratch that stretches from wrist to elbow, then he looks back at Dean, where Dean’s upper arm is wrapped from elbow to shoulder in thick bandage. 

“Why are we waiting?” Cas asks. Dean doesn’t need to ask what he means. Yesterday was fraught for them both, they both had their battles and Dean knows Cas was anxious when he’d got back to the motel first, with no word from Dean. He’d talked about it in a round-about way last night, worrying who would bother to let him know if anything happened to Dean and to Sam; worrying, basically, that no-one else other than the three of them knows that he and Dean are more than casually committed to each other.

Dean reaches his hand up to cup Cas’s cheek, and Cas puts his hand over Dean’s and turns his head to kiss Dean’s palm. 

“I don’t know why,” Dean says, shaking his head. He draws Cas’s hand down into his lap, holding it tightly in between his own. 

“Then… ?”

“Yeah,” Dean grins suddenly as the idea strikes and takes hold. “Yeah!” He leans forward, wrapping himself around Cas with such force, Cas rolls backwards onto the bed with a loud ‘oomph’. “Let’s do it.”

“Yes,” Cas says, smiling too now. “Yes, please.”

#

Dean knows his family and friends don’t really understand why this is so important to him and Cas, but he still wants them to be a part of it, and so as soon as the hour is reasonable, Dean knocks on Sam’s door and tells him. Then he rings Bobby, Ellen and Jo and tells them. Then he warns Bobby they’re doing it at his place. Then Bobby hangs up on him. Dean knows he’ll be cool though once he’s got used to the idea.

It’s going to take them all day to drive to Bobby’s so he and Sam set off as soon as they’re ready. Cas hates riding in the back seat of the car, and refuses to go with them. Dean’s glad Cas can fly because it means he doesn’t have to choose between Cas and the Impala. He doesn’t even have to think about choosing - in fact he’s not going to think about choosing. Sam looks at him a little strangely from the passenger seat, and Dean stops mumbling nonsensically and puts on the radio instead.

They’re a little under half way there before Dean works out there’s something going on. Sam’s asked for an unusual number of bathroom stops, not to mention that at each stop he disappears for at least fifteen minutes a time. And no, they didn’t have burritos for breakfast.

“What are you doing?” Dean asks suspiciously at one point.

Sam says, “Nothing,” but he looks way too smug.

This pretty much sets the mood for the rest of the trip, which makes for one hell of a long trip. 

Thirty minutes out from Bobby’s, Sam makes them stop again. Dean throws an empty plastic juice bottle at the back of Sam’s head in frustration as he disappears around the back of the gas station. Dean pulls his phone from his pocket and rings Cas.

“Where are you?”

“Athens.”

“Really? What the hell is this phone call costing me?”

“I don’t know. Are you at Bobby’s yet?”

“No… there’s something going on. Sam’s up to something. We’re at… “ Dean looks around, “Gas Central, Canton, South Dakota. Can you… “

“Yes,” Cas says, and there’s a flutter. “Hello, Dean.”

“Hey.” Dean can’t help the smile that appears automatically. God, he wishes he could kiss Cas.

Cas leans against the car next to Dean.

“How was Athens?” Dean asks, letting his fingers tangle with Cas’s behind the cover of Cas’s coat.

“Busy.”

Not Cas’s sort of place, then. “Sorry, Dude. Next time try the Sahara, maybe.”

“I already have.” Cas nods towards the building. “Sam is in there?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what he’s up to but he’s up to something.” Dean looks over at where he saw Sam disappear.

“You don’t seem worried.”

“Nah. It’s not that sort of ‘up to something’. He’s too pleased with himself,” Dean says, finishing his sentence as Sam picks that moment to come out from around the side of the building. Sam drops his phone into his pocket as he walks, which is a bit of a give-away, and he looks abnormally pleased to see Cas, which seems to take Cas aback somewhat. “See what I mean?” Dean murmurs out of the side of his mouth. “Too goddamn pleased with himself.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sam says to Cas when he gets within hearing distance. “Ride with us the rest of the way?”

“If Cas comes with us, will you tell us what you’ve been up to?” Dean challenges.

“Of course,” says Sam.

He doesn’t. He talks about every other frigging subject under the sun until they’re turning into Bobby’s salvage yard and they pass under a string of feathers tied to the sign, then he shuts up.

There’s that scrappy old willow on the left of the drive that is covered in white and black feathers. And the oak on the right, has pages from hunter journals, a couple of plaid rags, and some knives - Dean hopes to hell they’re tied on properly. Either way, he’s not going to be standing under that tree. The two trees are connected by a string of intertwined paper garlands.

“Dean?” Cas asks tentatively, peering out of the rear side window.

“Fucked if I know” Dean mutters, leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer up through the top of the windshield at a blackboard that says ‘Dean & Castiel’ in the middle of a huge pink heart. “You’ve got to be frigging kidding me,” Dean mutters. 

Sam chuckles beside him. “You like?”

Dean’s just about to answer him with some comment befitting the ridiculous nature of the decorations, when music suddenly blares out as they turn the last corner to park in front of the house. Led Zeppelin. 

They climb out of the car - Sam eagerly, Cas and Dean warily.

When Bobby, Ellen and Jo come out of the house, the look Bobby gives Sam is murderous, and Dean understands why when Ellen and Jo unfurl a huge banner across the width of the porch that has some kind of time-line on it that starts on the left at ‘Rescued from Hell’ and ends on the right with a big question mark. There are all sorts of marks in-between, some are pleasant memories, some not so. But Dean finally cottons on. He grins, claps his hand on Sam’s shoulder, walks up to the banner, finds the right time, and begging a pen off Ellen, adds ‘First Kiss’. Then he moves a little to the right and adds ‘Kiruna’, turns and winks at Cas. Then he’s bounding down the steps in one leap, grabs a surprised Cas around his waist and by his left hand, and swings him round to the music. 

“I didn’t teach you to dance for nothing,” he says,laughing at Cas’s comically outraged expression.

Sam turns to them both, and smiles sheepishly, shuffling his feet the way he used to do when he was a kid. “I know you think we all don’t get how important this is to you guys, but I want you to know we really do.” Sam waves a hand around the decorations. “So tonight we get to be ridiculous, and tomorrow - well, wait and see.“


	29. Doing Something Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I won’t be perfect, but I’ll always be here, and I’ll always love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unadulterated schmoop.
> 
> Sorry for the delay - I got distracted by episode 9x03 and I couldn't concentrate.

Cas is unusually quiet as they lie on their backs side-by-side, fingers entwined between them on the blankets. 

Dean squeezes his hand. “You okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Cas squeezes back in affirmation, though he sounds distracted.

This is usually Dean’s favorite time of the day. Whatever challenges the day brought are behind them, wounds are tended, discussions had, concerns addressed, humor taken where they can find it, they’re warm and buoyant with the sexual afterglow, and the comfort of sleep beckons. Today’s been a bit of an odd day though.

Sam’s planning and the way he’d roped in the others had paid off and Sam was obviously pleased, but it had just been a bit… well, a bit much really. Dean had been happy to call it a night when Cas had none-too-subtly suggested that they should go to bed. Cas had done well to last that long, partying isn’t really his sort of thing.

Dean turns his head towards Cas on the pillow and shuffles across to nuzzle at Cas’s shoulder. “Did you have fun tonight?”

“I think it was very nice of Sam, Bobby, Ellen and Jo to help us celebrate,” Cas says, not exactly answering the question, but genuine none-the-less. Cas turns onto his side to face Dean and draws him in closer with an arm around his back.

“So tomorrow’s the day, huh?” Dean murmurs sleepily.

“Yes.” 

Dean waits for Cas to say something else and when he doesn’t he pulls back to look at Cas properly in the dim moonlight forcing its way through the thin curtains. 

“We don’t have to do this, you know - we don’t have to have a ‘day’. Not if you don’t want to.” He leans in and kisses Cas on his shoulder to soften any potential implication Cas might glean from his words.

“No, it’s not that - it’s definitely not that - it’s just… Dean, can I be candid?”

Dean knows what he’s going to say. “You don’t want tomorrow to be like tonight was?”

Cas sighs. “You understand,” he says in relief. 

“Yeah, I do. Me too.” Dean kisses Cas again. “Don’t worry. We’ll have our time, I promise.” He rolls over and off the bed. Cas looks up at him in confusion. “Where are you going?”

Dean grabs his jeans from the floor, and starts shuffling into them. “I’ll be back, I’m just going to get a glass of water.”

“I could - “

“Nah, you stay. I’ll only be a minute.”

#

Dean hates waking Sam but needs must.

“Sam?” he hisses, loud enough for Sam but too quiet for anyone else. “Sam!”

Sam’s eyes jerk open suddenly. “What? Wassup?”

“S’okay,” Dean whispers. “I just need to talk to you for a minute.”

Sam wipes a hand over his face, before hitching himself up to sitting, his sleeping bag still gathered around his knees. “Everything okay?”

“Look, tonight was awesome. We both love you for it, we really do,” Dean says, “And I know you’ve got stuff planned for tomorrow, but would you be upset if we didn’t do any of it and we kept it simple?”

“Of course not, Dean.” Sam smiles sleepily. “It’s your day. I can let the flock of doves free anytime.”

“Wha… ?” Dean says, horrified. 

“I’m joking,” Sam chuckles quietly. Sam puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder and squeezes. “You guys do whatever you want to do.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Dean sighs. He stands up and winces as his knees crack. “We probably won’t be here first thing when you get up, but we’ll be back for a late breakfast, and I have a favor to ask. Here’s what I want you to do - “

Sam grins as Dean explains, runs his hand through his hair thoughtfully. “That might take an hour after the stores open - don’t come back before eleven, okay?”

Dean nods. “I can do that. G’night, Sam.”

“’Night, Dean.” Sam snickers. “Go get your man.” Dean ignores him, gets half way up the stairs before he remembers to come back down to fetch his water.

#

Dean wakes at five, not that he’s really been asleep; dozing more than sleeping. Cas hasn’t noticed he’s awake, sitting up on the bed, engrossed in whatever he’s reading. He’s wearing boxers, presumably in some kind of deference to being in Bobby’s house, and he’s holding his sore arm across his belly out of the way while he flicks through the pages of his book with deft fingers.

Dean watches Cas for a few minutes before reaching across to tap his wrist. “Morning.”

Cas puts his book down. “Morning.”

“Ready?”

“Yes.” Cas looks as if he’s steeling himself to go into battle, and Dean snorts a laugh. 

“Then let’s go.” Dean smiles, sits up and rolls out of the bed and to his feet in one fluid movement.

“Go?”

“Yeah. We’re taking a little ride in my car.”

“Okay,” Cas says, confused.

Dean leans over and kisses him. “I can’t quite manage Kiruna, but there is somewhere I want to show you.”

“Won’t Sam mind?” Cas says, standing up and getting dressed the old-fashioned way, which means his buttons don’t match his button-holes so Dean helps him out.

“Don’t forget your tie,” Dean says nodding to it where it’s draped over the back of the room’s only chair, “and no, Sam’ll be cool. We’ll be back in a few hours anyway.”

Cas drapes the tie around his neck but doesn’t do it up. Dean looks over his shoulder, “Come on,” he stage whispers as he opens the door to the bedroom quietly. “Try not to wake them.”

“I could fly us to your car, or to our destination, without making any noise,” Cas points out.

“Not the same,” Dean says grinning. “We have to sneak out. We’re eloping.”

“Oh,” Cas says, still confused. Then his eyes widen and the right side of his mouth curls into one of those little smiles that Dean loves so much. “Oh,” he says again.

#

They sit on the small bluff and watch the sun come up. It’s not far from Bobby’s and Dean has been here many times over the years. He’s never brought anyone with him before though, but Cas isn’t just anyone. It’s a bit cliched he supposes, but it doesn’t make it any less beautiful.

He takes Cas’s hand in his, lifts it to his face and kisses the ring on Cas’s finger, catching Cas’s gaze as he does so.

“I will forever bandage you and pick you up when you fall, and I will tear apart any son-of-a-bitch that comes near you with anything more dangerous than a paper towel. I will kiss away your worries. I will share my fries and my burgers with you. I will try not to laugh at you when you get grumpy with human things. I won’t be perfect, but I’ll always be here, and I’ll always love you.”

Cas is silent. Dean doesn’t mind. Cas doesn’t need to speak for Dean to know what he’s thinking. But then Cas slides his tie from around his collar and he wraps it loosely around his wrist, then around Dean’s where their hands are still joined.

“I’ll stay forever,” Cas says, “I am bound to you. I have been for a long time.” He looks up at the sunrise briefly before turning back to Dean. “I don’t tell you I love you,” he says, “because angels say it all the time, about God, about each other. It’s not enough for me to tell you I love you. There’s no word that I know of that conveys what I feel but it doesn’t make it any less real.”

Before Dean can even think about replying, not sure in any case what he’d say, Cas leans across the narrow space between them and kisses Dean, his tongue dipping quickly into Dean’s mouth when Dean parts his lips. Dean twists to lean further into the kiss, his hand sliding to cup the back of Cas’s head and pull him in closer. Their lips form a seal as they pant warmly into the damp of each others mouths and their tongues push against and around each other. Breathlessly, they pull apart. 

Dean bumps his forehead against Cas’s and grips Cas’s hand even tighter. They roll their heads back, still touching, to face the red morning clouds until the clouds turn orange and then white with the rising sun. They sit there in silence, and Dean thinks, this is all he needs, and when he turns to Cas to tell him that, Cas looks at him and says, “I know,” before Dean even has a chance to open his mouth. 

Dean shakes his head and huffs a small laugh, partly in good humor and partly in embarrassed acknowledgement at how frigging far gone they are. “C’mon man, we should get back,” He says, easing up to his feet.


	30. Doing Something Hot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ice-cream tasting part 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This went NC-17. Warning for anal sex. If you don't like that, read the first bit (you'll know till where) and the last two sentences.
> 
> This is the last prompt! Thanks to everyone who stuck with me through this, especially those who left comments and kudos and encouraged me to finish. I love you all.

“Do I really want to be watching this?” Bobby asks. “I know what happened last time.”

“What happened last time?” asks Sam curiously, as Dean winks knowingly at Bobby.

Bobby rolls his eyes and looks ready to bolt. “You don’t want to know,” he mutters.

Dean peers in to the freezer. “Those aren’t even ice-creams,” he says, eying the two cartons closest to him.

“They’re sorbets - it’s close enough,” Sam says, shrugging.

Dean scowls at Sam, because come on - sorbet? - but then on second thoughts what does it matter? 

“What the hell - Cas won’t notice,” Dean says leaning back, clapping Sam on the shoulder and starting to pull the containers out of the freezer. He puts them in a row in front of Cas. This is their concession to family times at his not-wedding to his angelic-not-boyfriend-significant-other-maybe-faux-husband that Dean is fairly sure Cas will enjoy.

Sam hands him a spoon, which Dean hands to Cas. Cas takes the spoon and sits at the table, eying the array of ice-cream and sorbet in front of him and looking incredibly serious. Dean can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up. Cas gives him a small genuine smile, and when he lifts his head to look at Dean, everything else fades out but those beautiful, intense blue eyes. Dean coughs, embarrassed under the weight of the sudden incredible surge of love that fills his chest, so big he’s not sure how it doesn’t burst out into the room.

“Okay,” Dean croaks. He glances away from Cas, because he has to if he’s going to keep his sanity. Sam and Ellen are watching him with expressions of amused sympathy, and Bobby’s shaking his head but there’s a smile on his face too. Jo looks sweetly ignorant - yeah, right.

“Dean?” Cas asks. Does his voice sound lower than usual or is it just Dean’s imagination?

“Yeah,” Dean says, pulling himself together. 

He wiggles his eyebrow suggestively at Cas, “You have to decide which one of these is your favorite, then I have to guess.”

“If you guess right do you win an orga - “

“Don’t want to know; don’t want to know; la la la,” Bobby sings with his hands over his ears. 

“Yes, dear,” Dean says ruffling Cas’s hair, and ignoring Bobby. “I do.”

Cas frowns. “You aren’t going to call me that are you?”

“He’d better not,” says Ellen. “It sounds ridiculous.”

“I agree,” Cas says, frowning harder.

Dean shoves forward a cheesecake brownie. “Shut up and try that.”

Cas tries all the flavors Sam bought - Chunky monkey, Cherry garcia, Cheesecake brownie, Pumpkin cheesecake, Pistachio, Berry berry extraordinary sorbet, Mango sorbet - with a look of concentration more suited to someone sitting a really hard maths exam. 

The way he puts each spoon fully into his mouth, then pulls it out slowly before he thoughtfully tastes the desert, rolls it around in his mouth, swallows slowly so his Adam’s apple bobs noticeably in his throat, then darts his tongue out to lick his lips clean is frankly obscene. Dean ‘adjusts’ himself subtly. He catches Ellen and Jo both watching Cas with their mouths hanging half-open. He scowls at them. Jo shuts her mouth fast and looks somewhere else, Ellen just shrugs. “Just admiring the view,” she says, and Dean can’t argue with that.

“Okay,” Cas says finally, looking at Dean and sticking his tongue out all the way to lick the back of the spoon clean. He locks eyes with Dean while he does it and Dean realizes the bastard’s been playing him all along. 

Bring it on. “Give me that damned spoon,” he says grinning, wrapping his hand around Cas’s and prizing it from him finger by finger.

Dean starts at the left, takes a spoonful of the cheesecake brownie, sucks it off the spoon. He feels his lips getting pleasantly numb as he stares at Cas looking for a reaction. Cas is inscrutable, not giving anything away.

Dean works his way along the line. He hesitates at the pistachio. Cas’s left eye had twitched just a fraction, but he’s not sure enough so he moves on to the berry berry extraordinary sorbet. This one’s definitely possible; there was an almost-brow-furrow on that one. On to the Mango, but there’s no reaction with that one except obvious disinterest. He goes back to the pistachio. It’s now a toss-up between that and the berry berry sorbet. 

Of course, Cas actually wants Dean to guess correctly, given the promised orgasm, so Dean has to take that into account. Having said that though, Cas would never purposefully let Dean win at any game, even if letting Dean win would be in his favor. Dean’s not sure where that leaves him.

As Dean tries the pistachio and the berry berry again, Cas has his features back under control and not even an eyelash is moving. Dean’s going to have to use reasoning. Cas has more of a savory-tooth than a sweet-tooth. Dean’s not sure he can apply that logic to ice-cream and sorbet though, considering they’re both so sweet. Nuts are more savory than fruit. Sort of. Cas likes pecan pie, but he also likes cherry pie. Cas raises an amused eyebrow. Dean has to acknowledge this is taking a probably ridiculous amount of time.

“Pistachio,” he says. Cas raises the other eyebrow. “No, changed my mind - berry berry.” Cas drops both eyebrows. Damn. “No, pistachio,” Dean nods once, decisive, “Always go with your first answer. Am I right?”

Cas stares at him. He’s deliberately drawing it out, the fucker.

Sam chuckles. Dean had almost forgotten there was anyone else in the room. “C’mon Cas, stop teasing him.”

“Pistachio it is,” Cas says. Dean fist-pumps. He grabs Cas’s hand and pulls him up from the table.

“Come on,” he says. As he drags Cas willingly out of the kitchen he hears Jo’s bemused inquiry, “Where are they going?”

“You don’t want to know,” Bobby answers back. 

Dean’s already undoing the buttons on Cas’s shirt as they scramble up the stairs, Dean walking backwards ahead of Cas, stumbling over the stairs in their rush. Cas is working at the buckle on Dean’s jeans. Cas could mojo all their clothes off in the blink of an eye but where the hell’s the fun in that?

Dean pulls Cas’s tie off over his head and it lands on the banister. Neither of them bother to pick it up. Cas has succeeded with Dean’s belt buckle and slips the button on his jeans. Dean slides Cas’s coat over his shoulders and off. Cas undoes Dean’s zipper and his jeans slip a little down his hips. 

They reach the top of the stairs, take two steps along the landing to their room. Cas tugs at Dean’s tee-shirt, and Dean lifts his arms so Cas can pull it off over his head. Dean has all of Cas’s shirt buttons undone now so Cas’s jacket and shirt are both slid backwards over his shoulders to fall on to the small landing. Dean’s back slams into their bedroom door and he fumbles behind him for the handle, his head hitting the door with a hard thud when Cas surges in to kiss him. When Dean turns the door’s handle, they fall backwards into the room, Dean fighting to keep their balance while Cas slams the door shut with his heel. They cover the small distance to the bed and Dean allows himself to topple onto it, his hands at Cas’s waist, pulling him down on top of him.

Cas lands on his elbows to stop himself squashing Dean.

A phone rings, not in the room but not far away. It stops. Then it rings again with another ringtone. Stops, rings again. The faint sound of laughter drifts up the stairwell. 

“Shit,” Cas says, dropping his forehead to Dean’s collar-bone.

“What the hell’s going on?” Dean asks, confused.

“I programmed my number into everyone’s phone so they could call me if… if anything happened to you. My phone’s in my coat, on the stairs.”

Dean can’t help laughing. “They’ll stop soon.” 

He pulls Cas closer, chest to chest, skin to skin, catches his teeth on Cas’s bottom lip, sucks on it lightly until he’s got Cas’s attention back to the more serious matter in hand. Cas moans, slides his hands up Dean’s flanks, letting his thumbs catch on Dean’s nipples, eliciting a hiss out of Dean. Cas circles his thumbs over the buds of both nipples, then lifts one hand and puts his thumb into his mouth. Dean watches, eyes wide, cock hardening impossibly, as Cas stares at him while he sucks his thumb, making it spit-slick. Cas pulls his thumb out of his mouth with a soft pop, puts it back on Dean’s nipple and slides it over the nipple and around the surrounding skin in small circles of pure sensation that has Dean arching into it. 

Cas leans down and takes Dean’s other nipple into his mouth, lightly between his teeth. Dean’s hips jerk up completely out of his control. “Fuck,” he moans throwing his head back.

“Okay,” Cas says, his warm breath gusting across Dean’s wet skin making him shiver. 

Then what Cas just said sinks in and Dean opens his eyes wide and peers down at Cas. 

“Okay, we should fuck,” Cas clarifies, which is good because Dean definitely needs the clarification. 

“Really?” 

“Really.”

Cas stands up and strips away the rest of his clothes, and Dean shuffles out of the rest of his as he lies on the bed watching him. Dean lifts a hand, “Come here,” and Cas takes his hand. For a moment they stay like that until Dean gives a breathless laugh and tugs, and Cas falls onto the bed beside him.

They shuffle up the bed, kissing anywhere they can each reach. Tongues lick, lips suckle, teeth scrape. Dean rakes his hand through Cas’s hair, mindlessly and uncontrolled, the soft strands tickling at his palm. Cas is holding onto Dean’s hips, his fingers spread out and gripping hard and he’s thrusting to slide their cocks together between them, using the closeness of their stomachs to get friction. Dean drops one hand, sliding it down Cas’s back until he reaches his ass, when he clamps his hand around the tight muscles of Cas’s ass cheek and pulls them even closer together. Cas groans, wraps one hand over Dean’s shoulder and holds tight as if he’s hanging on for dear life.

“Roll over,” Dean says, pushing lightly at Cas’s hip to encourage him, Dean kissing him as he moves, his arm, his shoulder, the edge of his scapula, the back of his neck. When Cas settles, Dean shifts forward so his chest is flush against Cas’s back, his erection lying hard between them, twitching in anticipation. He reaches his arm over Cas’s waist and takes Cas’s cock in his hand, wipes his thumb teasingly slowly over the slit. Cas thrusts into Dean’s hand, encouraging. 

“Hold that thought,” Dean says, taking Cas’s own hand and placing it to replace his own on Cas’s cock. He leans over Cas to the nightstand, takes a moment to appreciate the sight of Cas slowly stroking himself as he waits for Dean. Dean grabs the lube from the small toiletry bag, a brand new bottle he’s been carrying around for a few weeks now. He kisses Cas’s cheek, his ear, his throat as he eases himself back into position. 

He squeezes a generous amount of Lube onto two of his fingers, placing the bottle handily beside him on the bed. 

At the first touch of Dean’s slick fingers against Cas’s hole, Cas moans quietly and leans back into the pressure. Dean strokes across the little muscle, feeling it flutter instinctively. 

“If this hurts at all, tell me,” Dean says quietly.

“Okay,” Cas says.

Dean kisses the back of Cas’s neck as he eases the first finger in to the first knuckle. At first, Cas clenches involuntarily at the intrusion, but then Dean can feel him forcing himself to relax, and when the muscles loosen a little, Dean pushes the finger all the way in slowly then starts sliding it in and out while pulling a little to stretch Cas around him. Cas is panting in rhythm with his finger, but it’s a good panting, not a pained panting, so Dean takes the second lubed finger and pushes it carefully in beside the first.

Cas groans, pushing his hips suddenly back onto Dean’s fingers. Dean gasps, his cock twitches and a little glob of pre-cum pulses out of the slit and is quickly spread around the head when Dean rolls his hips against Cas’s back. 

“Okay?” he asks, not sure how he gets the word out - how he can get any words out.

Cas nods silently, leaning his head back and twisting it to encourage Dean to kiss him, which Dean does, unquestioning, mouthing along Cas’s jaw to the corner of his mouth as far as he can reach. Dean scissors his fingers, a little at first, then wider feeling Cas’s warmth loosen around him. His cock is trapped tight between his stomach and Cas’s back and the wetness spreading itself around them is distracting to say the least. 

He pushes the head of his cock against Cas’s ass and when Cas pushes back, his cock slides between Cas’s ass cheeks. Dean ducks his head and nips Cas’s earlobe. It was totally unintentional, and Cas yelps. “Sorry.” Dean takes his fingers out and reaches down beside him for the lube. He’s sure he puts too much on in his rush, but better too much than too little he figures. 

This probably isn’t the best angle to get a really deep thrust but Dean likes that Cas is so close to him while he does this. He wants to feel Cas from the tips of his hair to his heel pressing into Dean’s shin. He nudges the head of his cock against Cas’s hole, then pushes. 

The first part is the hardest, even though Dean has prepped Cas, his cock’s bigger than his fingers, and it’s a tight squeeze getting the head of his cock past the muscle. Cas bends his leg at his hip, spreading himself wider to help Dean slip inside, and when he does, they both moan loudly, Cas pulling his arm up and biting into the heel of his hand to muffle the sound, which somehow makes Dean moan even louder. The sensation of Cas warm and tight around him almost overwhelms him as Dean eases himself further in. 

Cas pushes back onto him and groans Dean’s name over and over in between pants and gasps. Dean reaches over Cas, and takes Cas in his hand, and he starts stroking Cas in time with the slow rhythm he sets up. 

He’s in Cas. He’s inside him, he couldn’t be closer to him. The thought itself is incredible, pulsating, makes his brain short out. He’s not going to last very long, Cas’s very presence makes him hard, and this is too much almost, Cas around him, against him, hard in his hand as he strokes him. And for all that the angle isn’t perfect, that Dean can only sheaf about three-quarters of his length in this position, it’s enough. His movements are deliberate and slow, not frantic and thrusting, but he can feel his orgasm building quickly. Cas moans against him, Dean can feel the vibrations against his chest. “Cas,” he murmurs on a gasp, his breath bouncing against the warmth of Cas’s upper back. 

“Dean,” Cas moans back, “this is… “ he stops, and thrusts his hips forward into Dean’s hand, then leans back onto Dean’s cock. “This is… “ He stutters to a stop again. Dean strokes Cas harder, runs the palm of his hand over the top of the head of Cas’s cock, Cas leaking pre-cum, making Dean’s hand slide easier, over the ridge, and down the spine, to Cas’s balls, and back up again. Dean speeds up his own thrusts in time with his hand, breaths Cas’s name again, laying his lips against the skin of Cas’s shoulder and panting into it, making the skin warm and wet with condensation. Cas tenses and groans and Dean knows he’s going to come, he feels Cas’s cock briefly get even harder just before Cas grunts in pleasure and his cock pulses in Dean’s hand and Dean has but a second to register the hot semen shooting out, coating his knuckles and fingers, before the clench of Cas’s muscles around his cock as Cas orgasms causes Dean to follow him, pulsing hard into Cas’s ass, with stuttered disorganized thrusts of his hips. “Holy fuck,” he yells, his head thrown back before he remembers to bury his more exuberant cries into Cas’s back, and what comes out is more like a series of sobs.

Dean moves when he can feel himself softening, and he slides himself out slowly, and admittedly it’s a little uncomfortable. Cas rolls over, and he looks completely fucked-out. There’s no other expression for it.

“I’m frigging glad I guessed the right ice-cream flavor,” Dean says staring at Cas in undisguised adoration.

Cas huffs a breathless laugh. “You didn’t - I prefer the berry berry.”


End file.
